Software Application Deployment Across Clusters

ABSTRACT

In some embodiments, a method for software application deployment across dusters may include receiving a request to deploy a software application with a first deployable component and a second deployable component. The method may further include determining, based on the request, an availability, within a first duster of the plurality of dusters, of first computing resources capable of executing the first deployable component, and an availability, within a second duster of the plurality of dusters different from the first duster, of second computing resources capable of executing the second deployable component. The method may further include deploying, based on the availabilities of the first and second computing resources, the software application across the plurality of dusters. For example, this deploying across dusters may include deploying the first deployable component to the first cluster and deploying the second deployable component to the second duster. Corresponding methods and systems are also disclosed.

RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 17/947,529, filed Sep. 19, 2022, which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 17/555,751, filed Dec. 20, 2021. The content of these applications is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The accompanying drawings illustrate various embodiments and are a part of the specification. The illustrated embodiments are merely examples and do not limit the scope of the disclosure. Throughout the drawings, identical or similar reference numbers designate identical or similar elements.

FIG. 1A illustrates a first example system for data storage in accordance with some implementations.

FIG. 1B illustrates a second example system for data storage in accordance with some implementations.

FIG. 1C illustrates a third example system for data storage in accordance with some implementations.

FIG. 1D illustrates a fourth example system for data storage in accordance with some implementations.

FIG. 2A is a perspective view of a storage cluster with multiple storage nodes and internal storage coupled to each storage node to provide network attached storage, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2B is a block diagram showing an interconnect switch coupling multiple storage nodes in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2C is a multiple level block diagram, showing contents of a storage node and contents of one of the non-volatile solid state storage units in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2D shows a storage server environment, which uses embodiments of the storage nodes and storage units of some previous figures in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2E is a blade hardware block diagram, showing a control plane, compute and storage planes, and authorities interacting with underlying physical resources, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2F depicts elasticity software layers in blades of a storage cluster, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2G depicts authorities and storage resources in blades of a storage cluster, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 3A sets forth a diagram of a storage system that is coupled for data communications with a cloud services provider in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 3B sets forth a diagram of a storage system in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 3C sets forth an example of a cloud-based storage system in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 3D illustrates an example computing device that may be specifically configured to perform one or more of the processes described herein.

FIG. 3E illustrates an example of a fleet of storage systems for providing storage services in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 4A illustrates an example container storage system in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 4B illustrates another example container storage system in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 5A illustrates an example controller configured to deploy a containerized application to one or more clusters among a plurality of clusters, in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 5B illustrates another example controller configured to deploy a containerized application to one or more clusters among a plurality of clusters, in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 6 depicts a flow diagram illustrating an example method using a controller for containerized application deployment, in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 7 depicts a flow diagram illustrating another example method using a controller for containerized application deployment, in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 8 depicts a flow diagram illustrating another example method using a controller for containerized application deployment, in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 9 depicts a flow diagram illustrating another example method using a controller for containerized application deployment, in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 10A depicts a flow diagram illustrating an example method using a controller for containerized application deployment to use multi-cluster computing resources in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 10B depicts a flow diagram illustrating another example method using a controller for containerized application deployment to use multi-cluster computing resources in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 11 illustrates an example configuration in which a controller of an orchestration cluster implements containerized application deployment to use multi-cluster computing resources in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 12A shows illustrative aspects of a plurality of clusters hosting different computing resources used by a containerized application when deployed in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 12B shows additional illustrative aspects of the plurality of clusters of FIG. 12A in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 12C shows illustrative aspects of how a containerized application may be deployed to use multi-cluster computing resources in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 13A shows an illustrative distribution of computing resources included within a plurality of clusters to which a containerized application may be deployed in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 13B shows another illustrative distribution of computing resources included within a plurality of clusters to which a containerized application may be deployed in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 14A depicts a flow diagram illustrating an example method using a controller for software application deployment across clusters in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 14B depicts a flow diagram illustrating another example method using a controller for software application deployment across clusters in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 15 shows illustrative aspects of how different components of a software application may be deployed across clusters in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 16 shows illustrative aspects of how different serverless functions of a software application may be deployed across clusters in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

DESCRIPTION OF EMBODIMENTS

Example methods, apparatuses, and products are described herein for containerized application deployment to use multi-cluster computing resources, and for software application deployment across clusters. These methods, apparatuses, and products are described in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure and with reference to the accompanying drawings, beginning with FIG. 1A. FIG. 1A illustrates an example system for data storage, in accordance with some implementations. System 100 (also referred to as “storage system” herein) includes numerous elements for purposes of illustration rather than limitation. It may be noted that system 100 may include the same, more, or fewer elements configured in the same or different manner in other implementations.

System 100 includes a number of computing devices 164A-B. Computing devices (also referred to as “client devices” herein) may be embodied, for example, a server in a data center, a workstation, a personal computer, a notebook, or the like. Computing devices 164A-B may be coupled for data communications to one or more storage arrays 102A-B through a storage area network (“SAN”) 158 or a local area network (‘LAN’) 160.

The SAN 158 may be implemented with a variety of data communications fabrics, devices, and protocols. For example, the fabrics for SAN 158 may include Fibre Channel, Ethernet, Infiniband, Serial Attached Small Computer System Interface (‘SAS’), or the like. Data communications protocols for use with SAN 158 may include Advanced Technology Attachment (‘ATA’), Fibre Channel Protocol, Small Computer System Interface (‘SCSI’), Internet Small Computer System Interface (‘iSCSI’), HyperSCSI, Non-Volatile Memory Express (‘NVMe’) over Fabrics, or the like. It may be noted that SAN 158 is provided for illustration, rather than limitation. Other data communication couplings may be implemented between computing devices 164A-B and storage arrays 102A-B.

The LAN 160 may also be implemented with a variety of fabrics, devices, and protocols. For example, the fabrics for LAN 160 may include Ethernet (802.3), wireless (802.11), or the like. Data communication protocols for use in LAN 160 may include Transmission Control Protocol (‘TCP’), User Datagram Protocol (‘UDP’), Internet Protocol (‘IP’), HyperText Transfer Protocol (‘HTTP’), Wireless Access Protocol (‘WAP’), Handheld Device Transport Protocol (‘HDTP’), Session Initiation Protocol (‘SIP’), Real Time Protocol (‘RTP’), or the like.

Storage arrays 102A-B may provide persistent data storage for the computing devices 164A-B. Storage array 102A may be contained in a chassis (not shown), and storage array 102B may be contained in another chassis (not shown), in some implementations. Storage array 102A and 102B may include one or more storage array controllers 110A-D (also referred to as “controller” herein). A storage array controller 110A-D may be embodied as a module of automated computing machinery comprising computer hardware, computer software, or a combination of computer hardware and software. In some implementations, the storage array controllers 110A-D may be configured to carry out various storage tasks. Storage tasks may include writing data received from the computing devices 164A-B to storage array 102A-B, erasing data from storage array 102A-B, retrieving data from storage array 102A-B and providing data to computing devices 164A-B, monitoring and reporting of storage device utilization and performance, performing redundancy operations, such as Redundant Array of Independent Drives (‘RAID’) or RAID-like data redundancy operations, compressing data, encrypting data, and so forth.

Storage array controller 110A-D may be implemented in a variety of ways, including as a Field Programmable Gate Array (‘FPGA’), a Programmable Logic Chip (‘PLC’), an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (‘ASIC’), System-on-Chip (‘SOC’), or any computing device that includes discrete components such as a processing device, central processing unit, computer memory, or various adapters. Storage array controller 110A-D may include, for example, a data communications adapter configured to support communications via the SAN 158 or LAN 160. In some implementations, storage array controller 110A-D may be independently coupled to the LAN 160. In some implementations, storage array controller 110A-D may include an I/O controller or the like that couples the storage array controller 110A-D for data communications, through a midplane (not shown), to a persistent storage resource 170A-B (also referred to as a “storage resource” herein). The persistent storage resource 170A-B may include any number of storage drives 171A-F (also referred to as “storage devices” herein) and any number of non-volatile Random Access Memory (‘NVRAM’) devices (not shown).

In some implementations, the NVRAM devices of a persistent storage resource 170A-B may be configured to receive, from the storage array controller 110A-D, data to be stored in the storage drives 171A-F. In some examples, the data may originate from computing devices 164A-B. In some examples, writing data to the NVRAM device may be carried out more quickly than directly writing data to the storage drive 171A-F. In some implementations, the storage array controller 110A-D may be configured to utilize the NVRAM devices as a quickly accessible buffer for data destined to be written to the storage drives 171A-F. Latency for write requests using NVRAM devices as a buffer may be improved relative to a system in which a storage array controller 110A-D writes data directly to the storage drives 171A-F. In some implementations, the NVRAM devices may be implemented with computer memory in the form of high bandwidth, low latency RAM. The NVRAM device is referred to as “non-volatile” because the NVRAM device may receive or include a unique power source that maintains the state of the RAM after main power loss to the NVRAM device. Such a power source may be a battery, one or more capacitors, or the like. In response to a power loss, the NVRAM device may be configured to write the contents of the RAM to a persistent storage, such as the storage drives 171A-F.

In some implementations, storage drive 171A-F may refer to any device configured to record data persistently, where “persistently” or “persistent” refers as to a device's ability to maintain recorded data after loss of power. In some implementations, storage drive 171A-F may correspond to non-disk storage media. For example, the storage drive 171A-F may be one or more solid-state drives (‘SSDs’), flash memory based storage, any type of solid-state non-volatile memory, or any other type of non-mechanical storage device. In other implementations, storage drive 171A-F may include mechanical or spinning hard disk, such as hard-disk drives (‘HDD’).

In some implementations, the storage array controllers 110A-D may be configured for offloading device management responsibilities from storage drive 171A-F in storage array 102A-B. For example, storage array controllers 110A-D may manage control information that may describe the state of one or more memory blocks in the storage drives 171A-F. The control information may indicate, for example, that a particular memory block has failed and should no longer be written to, that a particular memory block contains boot code for a storage array controller 110A-D, the number of program-erase (‘P/E’) cycles that have been performed on a particular memory block, the age of data stored in a particular memory block, the type of data that is stored in a particular memory block, and so forth. In some implementations, the control information may be stored with an associated memory block as metadata. In other implementations, the control information for the storage drives 171A-F may be stored in one or more particular memory blocks of the storage drives 171A-F that are selected by the storage array controller 110A-D. The selected memory blocks may be tagged with an identifier indicating that the selected memory block contains control information. The identifier may be utilized by the storage array controllers 110A-D in conjunction with storage drives 171A-F to quickly identify the memory blocks that contain control information. For example, the storage controllers 110A-D may issue a command to locate memory blocks that contain control information. It may be noted that control information may be so large that parts of the control information may be stored in multiple locations, that the control information may be stored in multiple locations for purposes of redundancy, for example, or that the control information may otherwise be distributed across multiple memory blocks in the storage drives 171A-F.

In some implementations, storage array controllers 110A-D may offload device management responsibilities from storage drives 171A-F of storage array 102A-B by retrieving, from the storage drives 171A-F, control information describing the state of one or more memory blocks in the storage drives 171A-F. Retrieving the control information from the storage drives 171A-F may be carried out, for example, by the storage array controller 110A-D querying the storage drives 171A-F for the location of control information for a particular storage drives 171A-F. The storage drives 171A-F may be configured to execute instructions that enable the storage drive 171A-F to identify the location of the control information. The instructions may be executed by a controller (not shown) associated with or otherwise located on the storage drive 171A-F and may cause the storage drive 171A-F to scan a portion of each memory block to identify the memory blocks that store control information for the storage drives 171A-F. The storage drives 171A-F may respond by sending a response message to the storage array controller 110A-D that includes the location of control information for the storage drive 171A-F. Responsive to receiving the response message, storage array controllers 110A-D may issue a request to read data stored at the address associated with the location of control information for the storage drives 171A-F.

In other implementations, the storage array controllers 110A-D may further offload device management responsibilities from storage drives 171A-F by performing, in response to receiving the control information, a storage drive management operation. A storage drive management operation may include, for example, an operation that is typically performed by the storage drive 171A-F (e.g., the controller (not shown) associated with a particular storage drive 171A-F). A storage drive management operation may include, for example, ensuring that data is not written to failed memory blocks within the storage drive 171A-F, ensuring that data is written to memory blocks within the storage drive 171A-F in such a way that adequate wear leveling is achieved, and so forth.

In some implementations, storage array 102A-B may implement two or more storage array controllers 110A-D. For example, storage array 102A may include storage array controllers 110A and storage array controllers 110B. At a given instant, a single storage array controller 110A-D (e.g., storage array controller 110A) of a storage system 100 may be designated with primary status (also referred to as “primary controller” herein), and other storage array controllers 110A-D storage array controller 110A) may be designated with secondary status (also referred to as “secondary controller” herein). The primary controller may have particular rights, such as permission to alter data in persistent storage resource 170A-B (e.g., writing data to persistent storage resource 170A-8). At least some of the rights of the primary controller may supersede the rights of the secondary controller. For instance, the secondary controller may not have permission to after data in persistent storage resource 170A-B when the primary controller has the right. The status of storage array controllers 110A-D may change. For example, storage array controller 110A may be designated with secondary status, and storage array controller 110B may be designated with primary status.

In some implementations, a primary controller, such as storage array controller 110A, may serve as the primary controller for one or more storage arrays 102A-B, and a second controller, such as storage array controller 110B, may serve as the secondary controller for the one or more storage arrays 102A-B. For example, storage array controller 110A may be the primary controller for storage array 102A and storage array 102B, and storage array controller 110B may be the secondary controller for storage array 102A and 102B. In some implementations, storage array controllers 110C and 110D (also referred to as “storage processing modules”) may neither have primary or secondary status. Storage array controllers 110C and 110D, implemented as storage processing modules, may act as a communication interface between the primary and secondary controllers (e.g., storage array controllers 110A and 110B, respectively) and storage array 102B. For example, storage array controller 110A of storage array 102A may send a write request, via SAN 158, to storage array 102B. The write request may be received by both storage array controllers 110C and 110D of storage array 102B. Storage array controllers 110C and 110D facilitate the communication, e.g., send the write request to the appropriate storage drive 171A-F. It may be noted that in some implementations storage processing modules may be used to increase the number of storage drives controlled by the primary and secondary controllers.

In some implementations, storage array controllers 110A-D are communicatively coupled, via a midplane (not shown), to one or more storage drives 171A-F and to one or more NVRAM devices (not shown) that are included as part of a storage array 102A-B. The storage array controllers 110A-D may be coupled to the midplane via one or more data communication links and the midplane may be coupled to the storage drives 171A-F and the NVRAM devices via one or more data communications links. The data communications links described herein are collectively illustrated by data communications links 108A-D and may include a Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (‘PCIe’) bus, for example.

FIG. 1B illustrates an example system for data storage, in accordance with some implementations. Storage array controller 101 illustrated in FIG. 1B may be similar to the storage array controllers 110A-D described with respect to FIG. 1A. In one example, storage array controller 101 may be similar to storage array controller 110A or storage array controller 110B. Storage array controller 101 includes numerous elements for purposes of illustration rather than limitation. It may be noted that storage array controller 101 may include the same, more, or fewer elements configured in the same or different manner in other implementations. It may be noted that elements of FIG. 1A may be included below to help illustrate features of storage array controller 101.

Storage array controller 101 may include one or more processing devices 104 and random access memory (‘RAM’) 111. Processing device 104 (or controller 101) represents one or more general-purpose processing devices such as a microprocessor, central processing unit, or the like. More particularly, the processing device 104 (or controller 101) may be a complex instruction set computing (‘CISC’) microprocessor, reduced instruction set computing (‘RISC’) microprocessor, very long instruction word (‘VLIW’) microprocessor, or a processor implementing other instruction sets or processors implementing a combination of instruction sets. The processing device 104 (or controller 101) may also be one or more special-purpose processing devices such as an ASIC, an FPGA, a digital signal processor (‘DSP’), network processor, or the like.

The processing device 104 may be connected to the RAM 111 via a data communications link 106, which may be embodied as a high speed memory bus such as a Double-Data Rate 4 (‘DDR4’) bus. Stored in RAM 111 is an operating system 112. In some implementations, instructions 113 are stored in RAM 111. Instructions 113 may include computer program instructions for performing operations in in a direct-mapped flash storage system. In one embodiment, a direct-mapped flash storage system is one that that addresses data blocks within flash drives directly and without an address translation performed by the storage controllers of the flash drives.

In some implementations, storage array controller 101 includes one or more host bus adapters 103A-C that are coupled to the processing device 104 via a data communications link 105A-C. In some implementations, host bus adapters 103A-C may be computer hardware that connects a host system (e.g., the storage array controller) to other network and storage arrays. In some examples, host bus adapters 103A-C may be a Fibre Channel adapter that enables the storage array controller 101 to connect to a SAN, an Ethernet adapter that enables the storage array controller 101 to connect to a LAN, or the like. Host bus adapters 103A-C may be coupled to the processing device 104 via a data communications link 105A-C such as, for example, a PCIe bus.

In some implementations, storage array controller 101 may include a host bus adapter 114 that is coupled to an expander 115. The expander 115 may be used to attach a host system to a larger number of storage drives. The expander 115 may, for example, be a SAS expander utilized to enable the host bus adapter 114 to attach to storage drives in an implementation where the host bus adapter 114 is embodied as a SAS controller.

In some implementations, storage array controller 101 may include a switch 116 coupled to the processing device 104 via a data communications link 109. The switch 116 may be a computer hardware device that can create multiple endpoints out of a single endpoint, thereby enabling multiple devices to share a single endpoint. The switch 116 may, for example, be a PCIe switch that is coupled to a PCIe bus (e.g., data communications link 109) and presents multiple PCIe connection points to the midplane.

In some implementations, storage array controller 101 includes a data communications link 107 for coupling the storage array controller 101 to other storage array controllers. In some examples, data communications link 107 may be a QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) interconnect,

A traditional storage system that uses traditional flash drives may implement a process across the flash drives that are part of the traditional storage system. For example, a higher level process of the storage system may initiate and control a process across the flash drives. However, a flash drive of the traditional storage system may include its own storage controller that also performs the process. Thus, for the traditional storage system, a higher level process (e.g., initiated by the storage system) and a lower level process (e.g., initiated by a storage controller of the storage system) may both be performed.

To resolve various deficiencies of a traditional storage system, operations may be performed by higher level processes and not by the lower level processes. For example, the flash storage system may include flash drives that do not include storage controllers that provide the process. Thus, the operating system of the flash storage system itself may initiate and control the process. This may be accomplished by a direct-mapped flash storage system that addresses data blocks within the flash drives directly and without an address translation performed by the storage controllers of the flash drives.

In some implementations, storage drive 171A-F may be one or more zoned storage devices. In some implementations, the one or more zoned storage devices may be a shingled HDD. In some implementations, the one or more storage devices may be a flash-based SSD. In a zoned storage device, a zoned namespace on the zoned storage device can be addressed by groups of blocks that are grouped and aligned by a natural size, forming a number of addressable zones. In some implementations utilizing an SSD, the natural size may be based on the erase block size of the SSD. In some implementations, the zones of the zoned storage device may be defined during initialization of the zoned storage device. In some implementations, the zones may be defined dynamically as data is written to the zoned storage device.

In some implementations, zones may be heterogeneous, with some zones each being a page group and other zones being multiple page groups. In some implementations, some zones may correspond to an erase block and other zones may correspond to multiple erase blocks. In an implementation, zones may be any combination of differing numbers of pages in page groups and/or erase blocks, for heterogeneous mixes of programming modes, manufacturers, product types and/or product generations of storage devices, as applied to heterogeneous assemblies, upgrades, distributed storages, etc. In some implementations, zones may be defined as having usage characteristics, such as a property of supporting data with particular kinds of longevity (very short lived or very long lived, for example). These properties could be used by a zoned storage device to determine how the zone will be managed over the zone's expected lifetime.

It should be appreciated that a zone is a virtual construct. Any particular zone may not have a fixed location at a storage device. Until allocated, a zone may not have any location at a storage device. A zone may correspond to a number representing a chunk of virtually allocatable space that is the size of an erase block or other block size in various implementations. When the system allocates or opens a zone, zones get allocated to flash or other solid-state storage memory and, as the system writes to the zone, pages are written to that mapped flash or other solid-state storage memory of the zoned storage device. When the system closes the zone, the associated erase block(s) or other sized block(s) are completed. At some point in the future, the system may delete a zone which will free up the zone's allocated space. During its lifetime, a zone may be moved around to different locations of the zoned storage device, e.g., as the zoned storage device does internal maintenance.

In some implementations, the zones of the zoned storage device may be in different states. A zone may be in an empty state in which data has not been stored at the zone. An empty zone may be opened explicitly, or implicitly by writing data to the zone. This is the initial state for zones on a fresh zoned storage device, but may also be the result of a zone reset. In some implementations, an empty zone may have a designated location within the flash memory of the zoned storage device. In an implementation, the location of the empty zone may be chosen when the zone is first opened or first written to (or later if writes are buffered into memory). A zone may be in an open state either implicitly or explicitly, where a zone that is in an open state may be written to store data with write or append commands. In an implementation, a zone that is in an open state may also be written to using a copy command that copies data from a different zone. In some implementations, a zoned storage device may have a limit on the number of open zones at a particular time.

A zone in a closed state is a zone that has been partially written to, but has entered a closed state after issuing an explicit close operation. A zone in a closed state may be left available for future writes, but may reduce some of the run-time overhead consumed by keeping the zone in an open state. In some implementations, a zoned storage device may have a limit on the number of closed zones at a particular time. A zone in a full state is a zone that is storing data and can no longer be written to. A zone may be in a full state either after writes have written data to the entirety of the zone or as a result of a zone finish operation. Prior to a finish operation, a zone may or may not have been completely written. After a finish operation, however, the zone may not be opened a written to further without first performing a zone reset operation.

The mapping from a zone to an erase block (or to a shingled track in an HDD) may be arbitrary, dynamic, and hidden from view. The process of opening a zone may be an operation that allows a new zone to be dynamically mapped to underlying storage of the zoned storage device, and then allows data to be written through appending writes into the zone until the zone reaches capacity. The zone can be finished at any point, after which further data may not be written into the zone. When the data stored at the zone is no longer needed, the zone can be reset which effectively deletes the zone's content from the zoned storage device, making the physical storage held by that zone available for the subsequent storage of data. Once a zone has been written and finished, the zoned storage device ensures that the data stored at the zone is not lost until the zone is reset. In the time between writing the data to the zone and the resetting of the zone, the zone may be moved around between shingle tracks or erase blocks as part of maintenance operations within the zoned storage device, such as by copying data to keep the data refreshed or to handle memory cell aging in an SSD.

In some implementations utilizing an HDD, the resetting of the zone may allow the shingle tracks to be allocated to a new, opened zone that may be opened at some point in the future. In some implementations utilizing an SSD, the resetting of the zone may cause the associated physical erase block(s) of the zone to be erased and subsequently reused for the storage of data. In some implementations, the zoned storage device may have a limit on the number of open zones at a point in time to reduce the amount of overhead dedicated to keeping zones open.

The operating system of the flash storage system may identify and maintain a list of allocation units across multiple flash drives of the flash storage system. The allocation units may be entire erase blocks or multiple erase blocks. The operating system may maintain a map or address range that directly maps addresses to erase blocks of the flash drives of the flash storage system.

Direct mapping to the erase blocks of the flash drives may be used to rewrite data and erase data. For example, the operations may be performed on one or more allocation units that include a first data and a second data where the first data is to be retained and the second data is no longer being used by the flash storage system. The operating system may initiate the process to write the first data to new locations within other allocation units and erasing the second data and marking the allocation units as being available for use for subsequent data. Thus, the process may only be performed by the higher level operating system of the flash storage system without an additional lower level process being performed by controllers of the flash drives.

Advantages of the process being performed only by the operating system of the flash storage system include increased reliability of the flash drives of the flash storage system as unnecessary or redundant write operations are not being performed during the process. One possible point of novelty here is the concept of initiating and controlling the process at the operating system of the flash storage system. In addition, the process can be controlled by the operating system across multiple flash drives. This is contrast to the process being performed by a storage controller of a flash drive.

A storage system can consist of two storage array controllers that share a set of drives for failover purposes, or it could consist of a single storage array controller that provides a storage service that utilizes multiple drives, or it could consist of a distributed network of storage array controllers each with some number of drives or some amount of Flash storage where the storage array controllers in the network collaborate to provide a complete storage service and collaborate on various aspects of a storage service including storage allocation and garbage collection.

FIG. 10 illustrates a third example system 117 for data storage in accordance with some implementations. System 117 (also referred to as “storage system” herein) includes numerous elements for purposes of illustration rather than limitation. It may be noted that system 117 may include the same, more, or fewer elements configured in the same or different manner in other implementations.

In one embodiment, system 117 includes a dual Peripheral Component Interconnect (‘PCI’) flash storage device 118 with separately addressable fast write storage. System 117 may include a storage device controller 119. In one embodiment, storage device controller 119A-D may be a CPU, ASIC, FPGA, or any other circuitry that may implement control structures necessary according to the present disclosure. In one embodiment, system 117 includes flash memory devices (e.g., including flash memory devices 120 a-n), operatively coupled to various channels of the storage device controller 119. Flash memory devices 120 a-n, may be presented to the controller 119A-D as an addressable collection of Flash pages, erase blocks, and/or control elements sufficient to allow the storage device controller 119A-D to program and retrieve various aspects of the Flash. In one embodiment, storage device controller 119A-D may perform operations on flash memory devices 120 a-n including storing and retrieving data content of pages, arranging and erasing any blocks, tracking statistics related to the use and reuse of Flash memory pages, erase blocks, and cells, tracking and predicting error codes and faults within the Flash memory, controlling voltage levels associated with programming and retrieving contents of Flash cells, etc.

In one embodiment, system 117 may include RAM 121 to store separately addressable fast-write data. In one embodiment, RAM 121 may be one or more separate discrete devices. In another embodiment, RAM 121 may be integrated into storage device controller 119A-D or multiple storage device controllers. The RAM 121 may be utilized for other purposes as well, such as temporary program memory for a processing device (e.g., a CPU) in the storage device controller 119.

In one embodiment, system 117 may include a stored energy device 122, such as a rechargeable battery or a capacitor. Stored energy device 122 may store energy sufficient to power the storage device controller 119, some amount of the RAM (e.g., RAM 121), and some amount of Flash memory (e.g., Flash memory 120 a-120 n) for sufficient time to write the contents of RAM to Flash memory. In one embodiment, storage device controller 119A-D may write the contents of RAM to Flash Memory if the storage device controller detects loss of external power.

In one embodiment, system 117 includes two data communications links 123 a, 123 b. In one embodiment, data communications links 123 a, 123 b may be PCI interfaces. In another embodiment, data communications links 123 a, 123 b may be based on other communications standards (e.g., HyperTransport, InfiniBand, etc.). Data communications links 123 a, 123 b may be based on non-volatile memory express (‘NVMe’) or NVMe over fabrics (‘NVMf’) specifications that allow external connection to the storage device controller 119A-D from other components in the storage system 117. It should be noted that data communications links may be interchangeably referred to herein as PCI buses for convenience.

System 117 may also include an external power source (not shown), which may be provided over one or both data communications links 123 a, 123 b, or which may be provided separately. An alternative embodiment includes a separate Rash memory (not shown) dedicated for use in storing the content of RAM 121. The storage device controller 119A-D may present a logical device over a PCI bus which may include an addressable fast-write logical device, or a distinct part of the logical address space of the storage device 118, which may be presented as PCI memory or as persistent storage. In one embodiment, operations to store into the device are directed into the RAM 121. On power failure, the storage device controller 119A-D may write stored content associated with the addressable fast-write logical storage to Rash memory (e.g., Rash memory 120 a-n) for long-term persistent storage.

In one embodiment, the logical device may include some presentation of some or all of the content of the Rash memory devices 120 a-n, where that presentation allows a storage system including a storage device 118 (e.g., storage system 117) to directly address Rash memory pages and directly reprogram erase blocks from storage system components that are external to the storage device through the PCI bus. The presentation may also allow one or more of the external components to control and retrieve other aspects of the Flash memory including some or all of: tracking statistics related to use and reuse of Flash memory pages, erase blocks, and cells across all the Flash memory devices; tracking and predicting error codes and faults within and across the Flash memory devices; controlling voltage levels associated with programming and retrieving contents of Flash cells; etc,

In one embodiment, the stored energy device 122 may be sufficient to ensure completion of in-progress operations to the Flash memory devices 120 a-120 n stored energy device 122 may power storage device controller 119A-D and associated Flash memory devices (e.g., 120 a-n) for those operations, as well as for the storing of fast-write RAM to Flash memory. Stored energy device 122 may be used to store accumulated statistics and other parameters kept and tracked by the Flash memory devices 120 a-n and/or the storage device controller 119. Separate capacitors or stored energy devices (such as smaller capacitors near or embedded within the Flash memory devices themselves) may be used for some or all of the operations described herein.

Various schemes may be used to track and optimize the life span of the stored energy component, such as adjusting voltage levels over time, partially discharging the stored energy device 122 to measure corresponding discharge characteristics, etc. If the available energy decreases over time, the effective available capacity of the addressable fast-write storage may be decreased to ensure that it can be written safely based on the currently available stored energy.

FIG. 1D illustrates a third example storage system 124 for data storage in accordance with some implementations. In one embodiment, storage system 124 includes storage controllers 125 a, 125 b. In one embodiment, storage controllers 125 a, 125 b are operatively coupled to Dual PCI storage devices. Storage controllers 125 a, 125 b may be operatively coupled (e.g., via a storage network 130) to some number of host computers 127 a-n.

In one embodiment, two storage controllers (e.g., 125 a and 125 b) provide storage services, such as a SCS) block storage array, a file server, an object server, a database or data analytics service, etc. The storage controllers 125 a, 125 b may provide services through some number of network interfaces (e.g., 126 a-d) to host computers 127 a-n outside of the storage system 124. Storage controllers 125 a, 125 b may provide integrated services or an application entirely within the storage system 124, forming a converged storage and compute system. The storage controllers 125 a, 125 b may utilize the fast write memory within or across storage devices119 a-d to journal in progress operations to ensure the operations are not lost on a power failure, storage controller removal, storage controller or storage system shutdown, or some fault of one or more software or hardware components within the storage system 124.

In one embodiment, storage controllers 125 a, 125 b operate as PCI masters to one or the other PCI buses 128 a, 128 b. In another embodiment, 128 a and 128 b may be based on other communications standards (e.g., HyperTransport, InfiniBand, etc.). Other storage system embodiments may operate storage controllers 125 a, 125 b as multi-masters for both PCI buses 128 a, 128 b. Alternately, a PCI/NVMe/NVMf switching infrastructure or fabric may connect multiple storage controllers. Some storage system embodiments may allow storage devices to communicate with each other directly rather than communicating only with storage controllers. In one embodiment, a storage device controller 119 a may be operable under direction from a storage controller 125 a to synthesize and transfer data to be stored into Flash memory devices from data that has been stored in RAM (e.g., RAM 121 of FIG. 10 ). For example, a recalculated version of RAM content may be transferred after a storage controller has determined that an operation has fully committed across the storage system, or when fast-write memory on the device has reached a certain used capacity, or after a certain amount of time, to ensure improve safety of the data or to release addressable fast-write capacity for reuse. This mechanism may be used, for example, to avoid a second transfer over a bus (e.g., 128 a, 128 b) from the storage controllers 125 a, 125 b. In one embodiment, a recalculation may include compressing data, attaching indexing or other metadata, combining multiple data segments together, performing erasure code calculations, etc.

In one embodiment, under direction from a storage controller 125 a, 125 b, a storage device controller 119 a, 119 b may be operable to calculate and transfer data to other storage devices from data stored in RAM (e.g., RAM 121 of FIG. 1C) without involvement of the storage controllers 125 a, 125 b. This operation may be used to mirror data stored in one storage controller 125 a to another storage controller 125 b, or it could be used to offload compression, data aggregation, and/or erasure coding calculations and transfers to storage devices to reduce load on storage controllers or the storage controller interface 129 a, 129 b to the PCI bus 128 a, 128 b.

A storage device controller 119A-D may include mechanisms for implementing high availability primitives for use by other parts of a storage system external to the Dual PCI storage device 118. For example, reservation or exclusion primitives may be provided so that, in a storage system with two storage controllers providing a highly available storage service, one storage controller may prevent the other storage controller from accessing or continuing to access the storage device. This could be used, for example, in cases where one controller detects that the other controller is not functioning properly or where the interconnect between the two storage controllers may itself not be functioning properly.

In one embodiment, a storage system for use with Dual PCI direct mapped storage devices with separately addressable fast write storage includes systems that manage erase blocks or groups of erase blocks as allocation units for storing data on behalf of the storage service, or for storing metadata (e.g., indexes, logs, etc.) associated with the storage service, or for proper management of the storage system itself. Flash pages, which may be a few kilobytes in size, may be written as data arrives or as the storage system is to persist data for long intervals of time (e.g., above a defined threshold of time). To commit data more quickly, or to reduce the number of writes to the Flash memory devices, the storage controllers may first write data into the separately addressable fast write storage on one more storage devices.

In one embodiment, the storage controllers 125 a, 125 b may initiate the use of erase blocks within and across storage devices (e.g., 118) in accordance with an age and expected remaining lifespan of the storage devices, or based on other statistics. The storage controllers 125 a, 125 b may initiate garbage collection and data migration data between storage devices in accordance with pages that are no longer needed as well as to manage Flash page and erase block lifespans and to manage overall system performance.

In one embodiment, the storage system 124 may utilize mirroring and/or erasure coding schemes as part of storing data into addressable fast write storage and/or as part of writing data into allocation units associated with erase blocks. Erasure codes may be used across storage devices, as well as within erase blocks or allocation units, or within and across Flash memory devices on a single storage device, to provide redundancy against single or multiple storage device failures or to protect against internal corruptions of Flash memory pages resulting from Flash memory operations or from degradation of Flash memory cells. Mirroring and erasure coding at various levels may be used to recover from multiple types of failures that occur separately or in combination.

The embodiments depicted with reference to FIGS. 2A-G illustrate a storage cluster that stores user data, such as user data originating from one or more user or client systems or other sources external to the storage cluster. The storage cluster distributes user data across storage nodes housed within a chassis, or across multiple chassis, using erasure coding and redundant copies of metadata. Erasure coding refers to a method of data protection or reconstruction in which data is stored across a set of different locations, such as disks, storage nodes or geographic locations. Flash memory is one type of solid-state memory that may be integrated with the embodiments, although the embodiments may be extended to other types of solid-state memory or other storage medium, including non-solid state memory. Control of storage locations and workloads are distributed across the storage locations in a clustered peer-to-peer system. Tasks such as mediating communications between the various storage nodes, detecting when a storage node has become unavailable, and balancing I/Os (inputs and outputs) across the various storage nodes, are all handled on a distributed basis. Data is laid out or distributed across multiple storage nodes in data fragments or stripes that support data recovery in some embodiments. Ownership of data can be reassigned within a cluster, independent of input and output patterns. This architecture described in more detail below allows a storage node in the cluster to fail, with the system remaining operational, since the data can be reconstructed from other storage nodes and thus remain available for input and output operations. In various embodiments, a storage node may be referred to as a duster node, a blade, or a server.

The storage duster may be contained within a chassis, i.e., an enclosure housing one or more storage nodes. A mechanism to provide power to each storage node, such as a power distribution bus, and a communication mechanism, such as a communication bus that enables communication between the storage nodes are included within the chassis. The storage cluster can run as an independent system in one location according to some embodiments. In one embodiment, a chassis contains at least two instances of both the power distribution and the communication bus which may be enabled or disabled independently. The internal communication bus may be an Ethernet bus, however, other technologies such as PCIe, InfiniBand, and others, are equally suitable. The chassis provides a port for an external communication bus for enabling communication between multiple chassis, directly or through a switch, and with client systems. The external communication may use a technology such as Ethernet, InfiniBand, Fibre Channel, etc. In some embodiments, the external communication bus uses different communication bus technologies for inter-chassis and client communication. If a switch is deployed within or between chassis, the switch may act as a translation between multiple protocols or technologies. When multiple chassis are connected to define a storage cluster, the storage cluster may be accessed by a client using either proprietary interfaces or standard interfaces such as network file system (‘INIFS’), common internet file system (‘CIFS’), small computer system interface (‘SCSI’) or hypertext transfer protocol (‘HTTP’). Translation from the client protocol may occur at the switch, chassis external communication bus or within each storage node. In some embodiments, multiple chassis may be coupled or connected to each other through an aggregator switch. A portion and/or all of the coupled or connected chassis may be designated as a storage cluster. As discussed above, each chassis can have multiple blades, each blade has a media access control (‘MAC’) address, but the storage cluster is presented to an external network as having a single cluster IP address and a single MAC address in some embodiments.

Each storage node may be one or more storage servers and each storage server is connected to one or more non-volatile solid state memory units, which may be referred to as storage units or storage devices. One embodiment includes a single storage server in each storage node and between one to eight non-volatile solid state memory units, however this one example is not meant to be limiting. The storage server may include a processor, DRAM and interfaces for the internal communication bus and power distribution for each of the power buses. Inside the storage node, the interfaces and storage unit share a communication bus, e.g., PCI Express, in some embodiments. The non-volatile solid state memory units may directly access the internal communication bus interface through a storage node communication bus, or request the storage node to access the bus interface. The non-volatile solid state memory unit contains an embedded CPU, solid state storage controller, and a quantity of solid state mass storage, e.g., between 2-32 terabytes (‘TB’) in some embodiments. An embedded volatile storage medium, such as DRAM, and an energy reserve apparatus are included in the non-volatile solid state memory unit. In some embodiments, the energy reserve apparatus is a capacitor, super-capacitor, or battery that enables transferring a subset of DRAM contents to a stable storage medium in the case of power loss. In some embodiments, the non-volatile solid state memory unit is constructed with a storage class memory, such as phase change or magnetoresistive random access memory (‘MRAM’) that substitutes for DRAM and enables a reduced power hold-up apparatus.

One of many features of the storage nodes and non-volatile solid state storage is the ability to proactively rebuild data in a storage cluster. The storage nodes and non-volatile solid state storage can determine when a storage node or non-volatile solid state storage in the storage cluster is unreachable, independent of whether there is an attempt to read data involving that storage node or non-volatile solid state storage. The storage nodes and non-volatile solid state storage then cooperate to recover and rebuild the data in at least partially new locations. This constitutes a proactive rebuild, in that the system rebuilds data without waiting until the data is needed for a read access initiated from a client system employing the storage duster. These and further details of the storage memory and operation thereof are discussed below.

FIG. 2A is a perspective view of a storage cluster 161, with multiple storage nodes 150 and internal solid-state memory coupled to each storage node to provide network attached storage or storage area network, in accordance with some embodiments. A network attached storage, storage area network, or a storage cluster, or other storage memory, could include one or more storage clusters 161, each having one or more storage nodes 150, in a flexible and reconfigurable arrangement of both the physical components and the amount of storage memory provided thereby. The storage cluster 161 is designed to fit in a rack, and one or more racks can be set up and populated as desired for the storage memory. The storage cluster 161 has a chassis 138 having multiple slots 142. It should be appreciated that chassis 138 may be referred to as a housing, enclosure, or rack unit. In one embodiment, the chassis 138 has fourteen slots 142, although other numbers of slots are readily devised. For example, some embodiments have four slots, eight slots, sixteen slots, thirty-two slots, or other suitable number of slots. Each slot 142 can accommodate one storage node 150 in some embodiments. Chassis 138 includes flaps 148 that can be utilized to mount the chassis 138 on a rack. Fans 144 provide air circulation for cooling of the storage nodes 150 and components thereof, although other cooling components could be used, or an embodiment could be devised without cooling components, A switch fabric 146 couples storage nodes 150 within chassis 138 together and to a network for communication to the memory. In an embodiment depicted in herein, the slots 142 to the left of the switch fabric 146 and fans 144 are shown occupied by storage nodes 150, while the slots 142 to the right of the switch fabric 146 and fans 144 are empty and available for insertion of storage node 150 for illustrative purposes. This configuration is one example, and one or more storage nodes 150 could occupy the slots 142 in various further arrangements. The storage node arrangements need not be sequential or adjacent in some embodiments. Storage nodes 150 are hot pluggable, meaning that a storage node 150 can be inserted into a slot 142 in the chassis 138, or removed from a slot 142, without stopping or powering down the system. Upon insertion or removal of storage node 150 from slot 142, the system automatically reconfigures in order to recognize and adapt to the change. Reconfiguration, in some embodiments, includes restoring redundancy and/or rebalancing data or load.

Each storage node 150 can have multiple components. In the embodiment shown here, the storage node 150 includes a printed circuit board 159 populated by a CPU 156, i.e., processor, a memory 154 coupled to the CPU 156, and a non-volatile solid state storage 152 coupled to the CPU 156, although other mountings and/or components could be used in further embodiments. The memory 154 has instructions which are executed by the CPU 156 and/or data operated on by the CPU 156. As further explained below, the non-volatile solid state storage 152 includes flash or, in further embodiments, other types of solid-state memory.

Referring to FIG. 2A, storage cluster 161 is scalable, meaning that storage capacity with non-uniform storage sizes is readily added, as described above. One or more storage nodes 150 can be plugged into or removed from each chassis and the storage cluster self-configures in some embodiments. Plug-in storage nodes 150, whether installed in a chassis as delivered or later added, can have different sizes. For example, in one embodiment a storage node 150 can have any multiple of 4 TB, e.g., 8 TB, 12 TB, 16 TB, 32 TB, etc. In further embodiments, a storage node 150 could have any multiple of other storage amounts or capacities. Storage capacity of each storage node 150 is broadcast, and influences decisions of how to stripe the data. For maximum storage efficiency, an embodiment can self-configure as wide as possible in the stripe, subject to a predetermined requirement of continued operation with loss of up to one, or up to two, non-volatile solid state storage 152 units or storage nodes 150 within the chassis.

FIG. 2B is a block diagram showing a communications interconnect 173 and power distribution bus 172 coupling multiple storage nodes 150. Referring back to FIG. 2A, the communications interconnect 173 can be included in or implemented with the switch fabric 146 in some embodiments. Where multiple storage clusters 161 occupy a rack, the communications interconnect 173 can be included in or implemented with a top of rack switch, in some embodiments. As illustrated in FIG. 2B, storage duster 161 is enclosed within a single chassis 138. External port 176 is coupled to storage nodes 150 through communications interconnect 173, while external port 174 is coupled directly to a storage node. External power port 178 is coupled to power distribution bus 172. Storage nodes 150 may include varying amounts and differing capacities of non-volatile solid state storage 152 as described with reference to FIG. 2A. In addition, one or more storage nodes 150 may be a compute only storage node as illustrated in FIG. 2B. Authorities 168 are implemented on the non-volatile solid state storage 152, for example as lists or other data structures stored in memory. In some embodiments the authorities are stored within the non-volatile solid state storage 152 and supported by software executing on a controller or other processor of the non-volatile solid state storage 152. In a further embodiment, authorities 168 are implemented on the storage nodes 150, for example as lists or other data structures stored in the memory 154 and supported by software executing on the CPU 156 of the storage node 150. Authorities 168 control how and where data is stored in the non-volatile solid state storage 152 in some embodiments. This control assists in determining which type of erasure coding scheme is applied to the data, and which storage nodes 150 have which portions of the data. Each authority 168 may be assigned to a non-volatile solid state storage 152. Each authority may control a range of inode numbers, segment numbers, or other data identifiers which are assigned to data by a file system, by the storage nodes 150, or by the non-volatile solid state storage 152, in various embodiments.

Every piece of data, and every piece of metadata, has redundancy in the system in some embodiments. In addition, every piece of data and every piece of metadata has an owner, which may be referred to as an authority. If that authority is unreachable, for example through failure of a storage node, there is a plan of succession for how to find that data or that metadata. In various embodiments, there are redundant copies of authorities 168. Authorities 168 have a relationship to storage nodes 150 and non-volatile solid state storage 152 in some embodiments. Each authority 168, covering a range of data segment numbers or other identifiers of the data, may be assigned to a specific non-volatile solid state storage 152. In some embodiments the authorities 168 for all of such ranges are distributed over the non-volatile solid state storage 152 of a storage cluster. Each storage node 150 has a network port that provides access to the non-volatile solid state storage(s) 152 of that storage node 150. Data can be stored in a segment, which is associated with a segment number and that segment number is an indirection for a configuration of a RAID (redundant array of independent disks) stripe in some embodiments. The assignment and use of the authorities 168 thus establishes an indirection to data. Indirection may be referred to as the ability to reference data indirectly, in this case via an authority 168, in accordance with some embodiments. A segment identifies a set of non-volatile solid state storage 152 and a local identifier into the set of non-volatile solid state storage 152 that may contain data. In some embodiments, the local identifier is an offset into the device and may be reused sequentially by multiple segments. In other embodiments the local identifier is unique for a specific segment and never reused. The offsets in the non-volatile solid state storage 152 are applied to locating data for writing to or reading from the non-volatile solid state storage 152 (in the form of a RAID stripe). Data is striped across multiple units of non-volatile solid state storage 152, which may include or be different from the non-volatile solid state storage 152 having the authority 168 for a particular data segment.

If there is a change in where a particular segment of data is located, e.g., during a data move or a data reconstruction, the authority 168 for that data segment should be consulted, at that non-volatile solid state storage 152 or storage node 150 having that authority 168. In order to locate a particular piece of data, embodiments calculate a hash value for a data segment or apply an inode number or a data segment number. The output of this operation points to a non-volatile solid state storage 152 having the authority 168 for that particular piece of data. In some embodiments there are two stages to this operation. The first stage maps an entity identifier (ID), e.g., a segment number, inode number, or directory number to an authority identifier. This mapping may include a calculation such as a hash or a bit mask. The second stage is mapping the authority identifier to a particular non-volatile solid state storage 152, which may be done through an explicit mapping. The operation is repeatable, so that when the calculation is performed, the result of the calculation repeatably and reliably points to a particular non-volatile solid state storage 152 having that authority 168. The operation may include the set of reachable storage nodes as input. If the set of reachable non-volatile solid state storage units changes the optimal set changes. In some embodiments, the persisted value is the current assignment (which is always true) and the calculated value is the target assignment the duster will attempt to reconfigure towards. This calculation may be used to determine the optimal non-volatile solid state storage 152 for an authority in the presence of a set of non-volatile solid state storage 152 that are reachable and constitute the same cluster. The calculation also determines an ordered set of peer non-volatile solid state storage 152 that will also record the authority to non-volatile solid state storage mapping so that the authority may be determined even if the assigned non-volatile solid state storage is unreachable. A duplicate or substitute authority 168 may be consulted if a specific authority 168 is unavailable in some embodiments.

With reference to FIG. 2A and 2B, two of the many tasks of the CPU 156 on a storage node 150 are to break up write data, and reassemble read data. When the system has determined that data is to be written, the authority 168 for that data is located as above. When the segment ID for data is already determined the request to write is forwarded to the non-volatile solid state storage 152 currently determined to be the host of the authority 168 determined from the segment. The host CPU 156 of the storage node 150, on which the non-volatile solid state storage 152 and corresponding authority 168 reside, then breaks up or shards the data and transmits the data out to various non-volatile solid state storage 152. The transmitted data is written as a data stripe in accordance with an erasure coding scheme. In some embodiments, data is requested to be pulled, and in other embodiments, data is pushed. In reverse, when data is read, the authority 168 for the segment ID containing the data is located as described above. The host CPU 156 of the storage node 150 on which the non-volatile solid state storage 152 and corresponding authority 168 reside requests the data from the non-volatile solid state storage and corresponding storage nodes pointed to by the authority. In some embodiments the data is read from flash storage as a data stripe. The host CPU 156 of storage node 150 then reassembles the read data, correcting any errors (if present) according to the appropriate erasure coding scheme, and forwards the reassembled data to the network. In further embodiments, some or all of these tasks can be handled in the non-volatile solid state storage 152. In some embodiments, the segment host requests the data be sent to storage node 150 by requesting pages from storage and then sending the data to the storage node making the original request.

In embodiments, authorities 168 operate to determine how operations will proceed against particular logical elements. Each of the logical elements may be operated on through a particular authority across a plurality of storage controllers of a storage system. The authorities 168 may communicate with the plurality of storage controllers so that the plurality of storage controllers collectively perform operations against those particular logical elements.

In embodiments, logical elements could be, for example, files, directories, object buckets, individual objects, delineated parts of files or objects, other forms of key-value pair databases, or tables. In embodiments, performing an operation can involve, for example, ensuring consistency, structural integrity, and/or recoverability with other operations against the same logical element, reading metadata and data associated with that logical element, determining what data should be written durably into the storage system to persist any changes for the operation, or where metadata and data can be determined to be stored across modular storage devices attached to a plurality of the storage controllers in the storage system.

In some embodiments the operations are token based transactions to efficiently communicate within a distributed system. Each transaction may be accompanied by or associated with a token, which gives permission to execute the transaction. The authorities 168 are able to maintain a pre-transaction state of the system until completion of the operation in some embodiments. The token based communication may be accomplished without a global lock across the system, and also enables restart of an operation in case of a disruption or other failure,

In some systems, for example in UNIX-style file systems, data is handled with an index node or inode, which specifies a data structure that represents an object in a file system. The object could be a file or a directory, for example. Metadata may accompany the object, as attributes such as permission data and a creation timestamp, among other attributes. A segment number could be assigned to all or a portion of such an object in a file system. In other systems, data segments are handled with a segment number assigned elsewhere. For purposes of discussion, the unit of distribution is an entity, and an entity can be a file, a directory or a segment. That is, entities are units of data or metadata stored by a storage system. Entities are grouped into sets called authorities. Each authority has an authority owner, which is a storage node that has the exclusive right to update the entities in the authority. In other words, a storage node contains the authority, and that the authority, in turn, contains entities.

A segment is a logical container of data in accordance with some embodiments. A segment is an address space between medium address space and physical flash locations, i.e., the data segment number, are in this address space. Segments may also contain meta-data, which enable data redundancy to be restored (rewritten to different flash locations or devices) without the involvement of higher level software. In one embodiment, an internal format of a segment contains client data and medium mappings to determine the position of that data. Each data segment is protected, e.g., from memory and other failures, by breaking the segment into a number of data and parity shards, where applicable. The data and parity shards are distributed, i.e., striped, across non-volatile solid state storage 152 coupled to the host CPUs 156 (See FIGS. 2E and 2G) in accordance with an erasure coding scheme. Usage of the term segments refers to the container and its place in the address space of segments in some embodiments. Usage of the term stripe refers to the same set of shards as a segment and includes how the shards are distributed along with redundancy or parity information in accordance with some embodiments.

A series of address-space transformations takes place across an entire storage system. At the top are the directory entries (file names) which link to an inode. Inodes point into medium address space, where data is logically stored. Medium addresses may be mapped through a series of indirect mediums to spread the load of large files, or implement data services like deduplication or snapshots. Medium addresses may be mapped through a series of indirect mediums to spread the load of large files, or implement data services like deduplication or snapshots. Segment addresses are then translated into physical flash locations. Physical flash locations have an address range bounded by the amount of flash in the system in accordance with some embodiments. Medium addresses and segment addresses are logical containers, and in some embodiments use a 128 bit or larger identifier so as to be practically infinite, with a likelihood of reuse calculated as longer than the expected life of the system. Addresses from logical containers are allocated in a hierarchical fashion in some embodiments. Initially, each non-volatile solid state storage 152 unit may be assigned a range of address space. Within this assigned range, the non-volatile solid state storage 152 is able to allocate addresses without synchronization with other non-volatile solid state storage 152.

Data and metadata is stored by a set of underlying storage layouts that are optimized for varying workload patterns and storage devices. These layouts incorporate multiple redundancy schemes, compression formats and index algorithms. Some of these layouts store information about authorities and authority masters, while others store file metadata and file data. The redundancy schemes include error correction codes that tolerate corrupted bits within a single storage device (such as a NAND flash chip), erasure codes that tolerate the failure of multiple storage nodes, and replication schemes that tolerate data center or regional failures. In some embodiments, low density parity check (‘LDPC’) code is used within a single storage unit, Reed-Solomon encoding is used within a storage cluster, and mirroring is used within a storage grid in some embodiments. Metadata may be stored using an ordered log structured index (such as a Log Structured Merge Tree), and large data may not be stored in a log structured layout.

In order to maintain consistency across multiple copies of an entity, the storage nodes agree implicitly on two things through calculations; (1) the authority that contains the entity, and (2) the storage node that contains the authority. The assignment of entities to authorities can be done by pseudo randomly assigning entities to authorities, by splitting entities into ranges based upon an externally produced key, or by placing a single entity into each authority. Examples of pseudorandom schemes are linear hashing and the Replication Under Scalable Hashing (‘RUSH’) family of hashes, including Controlled Replication Under Scalable Hashing (‘CRUSH’). In some embodiments, pseudo-random assignment is utilized only for assigning authorities to nodes because the set of nodes can change. The set of authorities cannot change so any subjective function may be applied in these embodiments. Some placement schemes automatically place authorities on storage nodes, while other placement schemes rely on an explicit mapping of authorities to storage nodes. In some embodiments, a pseudorandom scheme is utilized to map from each authority to a set of candidate authority owners. A pseudorandom data distribution function related to CRUSH may assign authorities to storage nodes and create a list of where the authorities are assigned. Each storage node has a copy of the pseudorandom data distribution function, and can arrive at the same calculation for distributing, and later finding or locating an authority. Each of the pseudorandom schemes requires the reachable set of storage nodes as input in some embodiments in order to conclude the same target nodes. Once an entity has been placed in an authority, the entity may be stored on physical devices so that no expected failure will lead to unexpected data loss. In some embodiments, rebalancing algorithms attempt to store the copies of all entities within an authority in the same layout and on the same set of machines.

Examples of expected failures include device failures, stolen machines, datacenter fires, and regional disasters, such as nuclear or geological events. Different failures lead to different levels of acceptable data loss. In some embodiments, a stolen storage node impacts neither the security nor the reliability of the system, while depending on system configuration, a regional event could lead to no loss of data, a few seconds or minutes of lost updates, or even complete data loss.

In the embodiments, the placement of data for storage redundancy is independent of the placement of authorities for data consistency. In some embodiments, storage nodes that contain authorities do not contain any persistent storage. Instead, the storage nodes are connected to non-volatile solid state storage units that do not contain authorities. The communications interconnect between storage nodes and non-volatile solid state storage units consists of multiple communication technologies and has non-uniform performance and fault tolerance characteristics. In some embodiments, as mentioned above, non-volatile solid state storage units are connected to storage nodes via PCI express, storage nodes are connected together within a single chassis using Ethernet backplane, and chassis are connected together to form a storage cluster. Storage clusters are connected to clients using Ethernet or fiber channel in some embodiments. If multiple storage clusters are configured into a storage grid, the multiple storage clusters are connected using the Internet or other long-distance networking links, such as a “metro scale” link or private link that does not traverse the internet.

Authority owners have the exclusive right to modify entities, to migrate entities from one non-volatile solid state storage unit to another non-volatile solid state storage unit, and to add and remove copies of entities. This allows for maintaining the redundancy of the underlying data. When an authority owner fails, is going to be decommissioned, or is overloaded, the authority is transferred to a new storage node. Transient failures make it non-trivial to ensure that all non-faulty machines agree upon the new authority location. The ambiguity that arises due to transient failures can be achieved automatically by a consensus protocol such as Paxos, hot-warm failover schemes, via manual intervention by a remote system administrator, or by a local hardware administrator (such as by physically removing the failed machine from the cluster, or pressing a button on the failed machine). In some embodiments, a consensus protocol is used, and failover is automatic. If too many failures or replication events occur in too short a time period, the system goes into a self-preservation mode and halts replication and data movement activities until an administrator intervenes in accordance with some embodiments.

As authorities are transferred between storage nodes and authority owners update entities in their authorities, the system transfers messages between the storage nodes and non-volatile solid state storage units. With regard to persistent messages, messages that have different purposes are of different types. Depending on the type of the message, the system maintains different ordering and durability guarantees. As the persistent messages are being processed, the messages are temporarily stored in multiple durable and non-durable storage hardware technologies. In some embodiments, messages are stored in RAM, NVRAM and on NAND flash devices, and a variety of protocols are used in order to make efficient use of each storage medium. Latency-sensitive client requests may be persisted in replicated NVRAM, and then later NAND, while background rebalancing operations are persisted directly to NAND.

Persistent messages are persistently stored prior to being transmitted. This allows the system to continue to serve client requests despite failures and component replacement. Although many hardware components contain unique identifiers that are visible to system administrators, manufacturer, hardware supply chain and ongoing monitoring quality control infrastructure, applications running on top of the infrastructure address virtualize addresses. These virtualized addresses do not change over the lifetime of the storage system, regardless of component failures and replacements. This allows each component of the storage system to be replaced over time without reconfiguration or disruptions of client request processing, i.e., the system supports non-disruptive upgrades.

In some embodiments, the virtualized addresses are stored with sufficient redundancy. A continuous monitoring system correlates hardware and software status and the hardware identifiers. This allows detection and prediction of failures due to faulty components and manufacturing details. The monitoring system also enables the proactive transfer of authorities and entities away from impacted devices before failure occurs by removing the component from the critical path in some embodiments.

FIG. 2C is a multiple level block diagram, showing contents of a storage node 150 and contents of a non-volatile solid state storage 152 of the storage node 150. Data is communicated to and from the storage node 150 by a network interface controller (‘NIC’) 202 in some embodiments. Each storage node 150 has a CPU 156, and one or more non-volatile solid state storage 152, as discussed above. Moving down one level in FIG. 2C, each non-volatile solid state storage 152 has a relatively fast non-volatile solid state memory, such as nonvolatile random access memory (‘NVRAM’) 204, and flash memory 206. In some embodiments, NVRAM 204 may be a component that does not require program/erase cycles (DRAM, MRAM, PCM), and can be a memory that can support being written vastly more often than the memory is read from. Moving down another level in FIG. 2C, the NVRAM 204 is implemented in one embodiment as high speed volatile memory, such as dynamic random access memory (DRAM) 216, backed up by energy reserve 218. Energy reserve 218 provides sufficient electrical power to keep the DRAM 216 powered long enough for contents to be transferred to the flash memory 206 in the event of power failure. In some embodiments, energy reserve 218 is a capacitor, super-capacitor, battery, or other device, that supplies a suitable supply of energy sufficient to enable the transfer of the contents of DRAM 216 to a stable storage medium in the case of power loss. The flash memory 206 is implemented as multiple flash dies 222, which may be referred to as packages of flash dies 222 or an array of flash dies 222. It should be appreciated that the flash dies 222 could be packaged in any number of ways, with a single die per package, multiple dies per package (i.e., multichip packages), in hybrid packages, as bare dies on a printed circuit board or other substrate, as encapsulated dies, etc. In the embodiment shown, the non-volatile solid state storage 152 has a controller 212 or other processor, and an input output (I/O) port 210 coupled to the controller 212. I/O port 210 is coupled to the CPU 156 and/or the network interface controller 202 of the flash storage node 150. Flash input output (I/O) port 220 is coupled to the flash dies 222, and a direct memory access unit (DMA) 214 is coupled to the controller 212, the DRAM 216 and the flash dies 222. In the embodiment shown, the I/O port 210, controller 212, DMA unit 214 and flash I/O port 220 are implemented on a programmable logic device (‘PLD’) 208, e.g., an FPGA. In this embodiment, each flash die 222 has pages, organized as sixteen kB (kilobyte) pages 224, and a register 226 through which data can be written to or read from the flash die 222. In further embodiments, other types of solid-state memory are used in place of, or in addition to flash memory illustrated within flash die 222.

Storage clusters 161, in various embodiments as disclosed herein, can be contrasted with storage arrays in general. The storage nodes 150 are part of a collection that creates the storage cluster 161. Each storage node 150 owns a slice of data and computing required to provide the data. Multiple storage nodes 150 cooperate to store and retrieve the data. Storage memory or storage devices, as used in storage arrays in general, are less involved with processing and manipulating the data. Storage memory or storage devices in a storage array receive commands to read, write, or erase data. The storage memory or storage devices in a storage array are not aware of a larger system in which they are embedded, or what the data means. Storage memory or storage devices in storage arrays can include various types of storage memory, such as RAM, solid state drives, hard disk drives, etc. The non-volatile solid state storage 152 units described herein have multiple interfaces active simultaneously and serving multiple purposes. In some embodiments, some of the functionality of a storage node 150 is shifted into a storage unit 152, transforming the storage unit 152 into a combination of storage unit 152 and storage node 150. Placing computing (relative to storage data) into the storage unit 152 places this computing closer to the data itself. The various system embodiments have a hierarchy of storage node layers with different capabilities. By contrast, in a storage array, a controller owns and knows everything about all of the data that the controller manages in a shelf or storage devices. In a storage cluster 161, as described herein, multiple controllers in multiple non-volatile sold state storage 152 units and/or storage nodes 150 cooperate in various ways (e.g., for erasure coding, data sharding, metadata communication and redundancy, storage capacity expansion or contraction, data recovery, and so on).

FIG. 2D shows a storage server environment, which uses embodiments of the storage nodes 150 and storage 152 units of FIGS. 2A-C. In this version, each non-volatile solid state storage 152 unit has a processor such as controller 212 (see FIG. 2C), an FPGA, flash memory 206, and NVRAM 204 (which is super-capacitor backed DRAM 216, see FIGS. 2B and 2C) on a PCIe (peripheral component interconnect express) board in a chassis 138 (see FIG. 2A). The non-volatile solid state storage 152 unit may be implemented as a single board containing storage, and may be the largest tolerable failure domain inside the chassis. In some embodiments, up to two non-volatile solid state storage 152 units may fail and the device will continue with no data loss.

The physical storage is divided into named regions based on application usage in some embodiments. The NVRAM 204 is a contiguous block of reserved memory in the non-volatile solid state storage 152 DRAM 216, and is backed by NAND flash. NVRAM 204 is logically divided into multiple memory regions written for two as spool (e.g., spool_region). Space within the NVRAM 204 spools is managed by each authority 168 independently. Each device provides an amount of storage space to each authority 168. That authority 168 further manages lifetimes and allocations within that space. Examples of a spool include distributed transactions or notions. When the primary power to a non-volatile solid state storage 152 unit fails, onboard super-capacitors provide a short duration of power hold up. During this holdup interval, the contents of the NVRAM 204 are flushed to flash memory 206. On the next power-on, the contents of the NVRAM 204 are recovered from the flash memory 206.

As for the storage unit controller, the responsibility of the logical “controller” is distributed across each of the blades containing authorities 168. This distribution of logical control is shown in FIG. 2D as a host controller 242, mid-tier controller 244 and storage unit controller(s) 246, Management of the control plane and the storage plane are treated independently, although parts may be physically co-located on the same blade. Each authority 168 effectively serves as an independent controller. Each authority 168 provides its own data and metadata structures, its own background workers, and maintains its own lifecycle.

FIG. 2E is a blade 252 hardware block diagram, showing a control plane 254, compute and storage planes 256, 258, and authorities 168 interacting with underlying physical resources, using embodiments of the storage nodes 150 and storage units 152 of FIGS. 2A-C in the storage server environment of FIG. 2D. The control plane 254 is partitioned into a number of authorities 168 which can use the compute resources in the compute plane 256 to run on any of the blades 252. The storage plane 258 is partitioned into a set of devices, each of which provides access to flash 206 and NVRAM 204 resources. In one embodiment, the compute plane 256 may perform the operations of a storage array controller, as described herein, on one or more devices of the storage plane 258 (e.g., a storage array).

In the compute and storage planes 256, 258 of FIG. 2E, the authorities 168 interact with the underlying physical resources (i.e., devices). From the point of view of an authority 168, its resources are striped over all of the physical devices. From the point of view of a device, it provides resources to all authorities 168, irrespective of where the authorities happen to run. Each authority 168 has allocated or has been allocated one or more partitions 260 of storage memory in the storage units 152, e.g., partitions 260 in flash memory 206 and NVRAM 204. Each authority 168 uses those allocated partitions 260 that belong to it, for writing or reading user data. Authorities can be associated with differing amounts of physical storage of the system. For example, one authority 168 could have a larger number of partitions 260 or larger sized partitions 260 in one or more storage units 152 than one or more other authorities 168.

FIG. 2F depicts elasticity software layers in blades 252 of a storage cluster, in accordance with some embodiments. In the elasticity structure, elasticity software is symmetric, i.e., each blade's compute module 270 runs the three identical layers of processes depicted in FIG. 2F. Storage managers 274 execute read and write requests from other blades 252 for data and metadata stored in local storage unit 152 NVRAM 204 and flash 206. Authorities 168 fulfill client requests by issuing the necessary reads and writes to the blades 252 on whose storage units 152 the corresponding data or metadata resides. Endpoints 272 parse client connection requests received from switch fabric 146 supervisory software, relay the client connection requests to the authorities 168 responsible for fulfillment, and relay the authorities' 168 responses to clients. The symmetric three-layer structure enables the storage system's high degree of concurrency, Elasticity scales out efficiently and reliably in these embodiments. In addition, elasticity implements a unique scale-out technique that balances work evenly across all resources regardless of client access pattern, and maximizes concurrency by eliminating much of the need for inter-blade coordination that typically occurs with conventional distributed locking.

Still referring to FIG. 2F, authorities 168 running in the compute modules 270 of a blade 252 perform the internal operations required to fulfill client requests. One feature of elasticity is that authorities 168 are stateless, i.e., they cache active data and metadata in their own blades' 252 DRAMs for fast access, but the authorities store every update in their NVRAM 204 partitions on three separate blades 252 until the update has been written to flash 206. All the storage system writes to NVRAM 204 are in triplicate to partitions on three separate blades 252 in some embodiments. With triple-mirrored NVRAM 204 and persistent storage protected by parity and Reed-Solomon RAID checksums, the storage system can survive concurrent failure of two blades 252 with no loss of data, metadata, or access to either.

Because authorities 168 are stateless, they can migrate between blades 252, Each authority 168 has a unique identifier. NVRAM 204 and flash 206 partitions are associated with authorities' 168 identifiers, not with the blades 252 on which they are running in some. Thus, when an authority 168 migrates, the authority 168 continues to manage the same storage partitions from its new location. When a new blade 252 is installed in an embodiment of the storage cluster, the system automatically rebalances load by: partitioning the new blade's 252 storage for use by the system's authorities 168, migrating selected authorities 168 to the new blade 252, starting endpoints 272 on the new blade 252 and including them in the switch fabric's 146 client connection distribution algorithm.

From their new locations, migrated authorities 168 persist the contents of their NVRAM 204 partitions on flash 206, process read and write requests from other authorities 168, and fulfill the client requests that endpoints 272 direct to them. Similarly, if a blade 252 fans or is removed, the system redistributes its authorities 168 among the system's remaining blades 252. The redistributed authorities 168 continue to perform their original functions from their new locations.

FIG. 2G depicts authorities 168 and storage resources in blades 252 of a storage cluster, in accordance with some embodiments. Each authority 168 is exclusively responsible for a partition of the flash 206 and NVRAM 204 on each blade 252. The authority 168 manages the content and integrity of its partitions independently of other authorities 168. Authorities 168 compress incoming data and preserve it temporarily in their NVRAM 204 partitions, and then consolidate, RAID-protect, and persist the data in segments of the storage in their flash 206 partitions. As the authorities 168 write data to flash 206, storage managers 274 perform the necessary flash translation to optimize write performance and maximize media longevity. In the background, authorities 168 “garbage collect,” or reclaim space occupied by data that clients have made obsolete by overwriting the data. It should be appreciated that since authorities' 168 partitions are disjoint, there is no need for distributed locking to execute client and writes or to perform background functions.

The embodiments described herein may utilize various software, communication and/or networking protocols. In addition, the configuration of the hardware and/or software may be adjusted to accommodate various protocols. For example, the embodiments may utilize Active Directory, which is a database based system that provides authentication, directory, policy, and other services in a WINDOWS™ environment. In these embodiments, LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is one example application protocol for querying and modifying items in directory service providers such as Active Directory. In some embodiments, a network lock manager (‘NFM’) is utilized as a facility that works in cooperation with the Network File System (‘NFS’) to provide a System V style of advisory file and record locking over a network. The Server Message Block (‘SMB’) protocol, one version of which is also known as Common Internet File System (‘CIFS’), may be integrated with the storage systems discussed herein. SMB operates as an application-layer network protocol typically used for providing shared access to files, printers, and serial ports and miscellaneous communications between nodes on a network. SMB also provides an authenticated inter-process communication mechanism, AMAZON™S3 (Simple Storage Service) is a web service offered by Amazon Web Services, and the systems described herein may interface with Amazon S3 through web services interfaces (REST (representational state transfer), SOAP (simple object access protocol), and BitTorrent). A RESTful API (application programming interface) breaks down a transaction to create a series of small modules. Each module addresses a particular underlying part of the transaction. The control or permissions provided with these embodiments, especially for object data, may include utilization of an access control list (‘ACL’). The ACL is a list of permissions attached to an object and the ACL specifies which users or system processes are granted access to objects, as well as what operations are allowed on given objects. The systems may utilize Internet Protocol version 6 (‘IPv6’), as well as IPv4, for the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. The routing of packets between networked systems may include Equal-cost multi-path routing (‘ECMP’), which is a routing strategy where next-hop packet forwarding to a single destination can occur over multiple “best paths” which tie for top place in routing metric calculations. Multi-path routing can be used in conjunction with most routing protocols, because it is a per-hop decision limited to a single router. The software may support Multi-tenancy, which is an architecture in which a single instance of a software application serves multiple customers. Each customer may be referred to as a tenant. Tenants may be given the ability to customize some parts of the application, but may not customize the application's code, in some embodiments. The embodiments may maintain audit logs. An audit log is a document that records an event in a computing system. In addition to documenting what resources were accessed, audit log entries typically include destination and source addresses, a timestamp, and user login information for compliance with various regulations. The embodiments may support various key management policies, such as encryption key rotation. In addition, the system may support dynamic root passwords or some variation dynamically changing passwords.

FIG. 3A sets forth a diagram of a storage system 306 that is coupled for data communications with a cloud services provider 302 in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure. Although depicted in less detail, the storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3A may be similar to the storage systems described above with reference to FIGS. 1A-1D and FIGS. 2A-2G. In some embodiments, the storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3A may be embodied as a storage system that includes imbalanced active/active controllers, as a storage system that includes balanced active/active controllers, as a storage system that includes active/active controllers where less than all of each controller's resources are utilized such that each controller has reserve resources that may be used to support failover, as a storage system that includes fully active/active controllers, as a storage system that includes dataset-segregated controllers, as a storage system that includes dual-layer architectures with front-end controllers and back-end integrated storage controllers, as a storage system that includes scale-out clusters of dual-controller arrays, as well as combinations of such embodiments.

In the example depicted in FIG. 3A, the storage system 306 is coupled to the cloud services provider 302 via a data communications link 304. Such a data communications link 304 may be fully wired, fully wireless, or some aggregation of wired and wireless data communications pathways. In such an example, digital information may be exchanged between the storage system 306 and the cloud services provider 302 via the data communications link 304 using one or more data communications protocols. For example, digital information may be exchanged between the storage system 306 and the cloud services provider 302 via the data communications link 304 using the handheld device transfer protocol (‘HDTP’), hypertext transfer protocol (‘HTTP’), internet protocol (‘IP’), real-time transfer protocol (‘RTP’), transmission control protocol (‘TCP’), user datagram protocol (‘UDR’), wireless application protocol (‘WAP’), or other protocol.

The cloud services provider 302 depicted in FIG. 3A may be embodied, for example, as a system and computing environment that provides a vast array of services to users of the cloud services provider 302 through the sharing of computing resources via the data communications link 304. The cloud services provider 302 may provide on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources such as computer networks, servers, storage, applications and services, and so on.

In the example depicted in FIG. 3A, the cloud services provider 302 may be configured to provide a variety of services to the storage system 306 and users of the storage system 306 through the implementation of various service models. For example, the cloud services provider 302 may be configured to provide services through the implementation of an infrastructure as a service (‘IaaS’) service model, through the implementation of a platform as a service (‘PaaS’) service model, through the implementation of a software as a service (‘SaaS’) service model, through the implementation of an authentication as a service (‘AaaS’) service model, through the implementation of a storage as a service model where the cloud services provider 302 offers access to its storage infrastructure for use by the storage system 306 and users of the storage system 306, and so on.

In the example depicted in FIG. 3A, the cloud services provider 302 may be embodied, for example, as a private cloud, as a public cloud, or as a combination of a private cloud and public cloud. In an embodiment in which the cloud services provider 302 is embodied as a private cloud, the cloud services provider 302 may be dedicated to providing services to a single organization rather than providing services to multiple organizations. In an embodiment where the cloud services provider 302 is embodied as a public cloud, the cloud services provider 302 may provide services to multiple organizations. In still alternative embodiments, the cloud services provider 302 may be embodied as a mix of a private and public cloud services with a hybrid cloud deployment.

Although not explicitly depicted in FIG. 3A, readers will appreciate that a vast amount of additional hardware components and additional software components may be necessary to facilitate the delivery of cloud services to the storage system 306 and users of the storage system 306. For example, the storage system 306 may be coupled to (or even include) a cloud storage gateway. Such a cloud storage gateway may be embodied, for example, as hardware-based or software-based appliance that is located on premise with the storage system 306. Such a cloud storage gateway may operate as a bridge between local applications that are executing on the storage system 306 and remote, cloud-based storage that is utilized by the storage system 306. Through the use of a cloud storage gateway, organizations may move primary iSCSI or NAS to the cloud services provider 302, thereby enabling the organization to save space on their on-premises storage systems. Such a cloud storage gateway may be configured to emulate a disk array, a block-based device, a file server, or other storage system that can translate the SCSI commands, file server commands, or other appropriate command into REST-space protocols that facilitate communications with the cloud services provider 302.

In order to enable the storage system 306 and users of the storage system 306 to make use of the services provided by the cloud services provider 302, a cloud migration process may take place during which data, applications, or other elements from an organization's local systems (or even from another cloud environment) are moved to the cloud services provider 302. In order to successfully migrate data, applications, or other elements to the cloud services providers 302 environment, middleware such as a cloud migration tool may be utilized to bridge gaps between the cloud services provider's 302 environment and an organization's environment. In order to further enable the storage system 306 and users of the storage system 306 to make use of the services provided by the cloud services provider 302, a cloud orchestrator may also be used to arrange and coordinate automated tasks in pursuit of creating a consolidated process or workflow. Such a cloud orchestrator may perform tasks such as configuring various components, whether those components are cloud components or on-premises components, as well as managing the interconnections between such components.

In the example depicted in FIG. 3A, and as described briefly above, the cloud services provider 302 may be configured to provide services to the storage system 306 and users of the storage system 306 through the usage of a SaaS service model. For example, the cloud services provider 302 may be configured to provide access to data analytics applications to the storage system 306 and users of the storage system 306. Such data analytics applications may be configured, for example, to receive vast amounts of telemetry data phoned home by the storage system 306. Such telemetry data may describe various operating characteristics of the storage system 306 and may be analyzed for a vast array of purposes including, for example, to determine the health of the storage system 306, to identify workloads that are executing on the storage system 306, to predict when the storage system 306 will run out of various resources, to recommend configuration changes, hardware or software upgrades, workflow migrations, or other actions that may improve the operation of the storage system 306.

The cloud services provider 302 may also be configured to provide access to virtualized computing environments to the storage system 306 and users of the storage system 306. Examples of such virtualized environments can include virtual machines that are created to emulate an actual computer, virtualized desktop environments that separate a logical desktop from a physical machine, virtualized file systems that allow uniform access to different types of concrete file systems, and many others.

Although the example depicted in FIG. 3A illustrates the storage system 306 being coupled for data communications with the cloud services provider 302, in other embodiments the storage system 306 may be part of a hybrid cloud deployment in which private cloud elements (e.g., private cloud services, on-premises infrastructure, and so on) and public cloud elements (e.g., public cloud services, infrastructure, and so on that may be provided by one or more cloud services providers) are combined to form a single solution, with orchestration among the various platforms. Such a hybrid cloud deployment may leverage hybrid cloud management software such as, for example, Azure™ Arc from Microsoft™, that centralize the management of the hybrid cloud deployment to any infrastructure and enable the deployment of services anywhere. In such an example, the hybrid cloud management software may be configured to create, update, and delete resources (both physical and virtual) that form the hybrid cloud deployment, to allocate compute and storage to specific workloads, to monitor workloads and resources for performance, policy compliance, updates and patches, security status, or to perform a variety of other tasks.

Readers will appreciate that by pairing the storage systems described herein with one or more cloud services providers, various offerings may be enabled. For example, disaster recovery as a service (‘DRaaS’) may be provided where cloud resources are utilized to protect applications and data from disruption caused by disaster, including in embodiments where the storage systems may serve as the primary data store. In such embodiments, a total system backup may be taken that allows for business continuity in the event of system failure. In such embodiments, cloud data backup techniques (by themselves or as part of a larger DRaaS solution) may also be integrated into an overall solution that includes the storage systems and cloud services providers described herein.

The storage systems described herein, as well as the cloud services providers, may be utilized to provide a wide array of security features. For example, the storage systems may encrypt data at rest (and data may be sent to and from the storage systems encrypted) and may make use of Key Management-as-a-Service (‘KMaaS’) to manage encryption keys, keys for locking and unlocking storage devices, and so on. Likewise, cloud data security gateways or similar mechanisms may be utilized to ensure that data stored within the storage systems does not improperly end up being stored in the cloud as part of a cloud data backup operation. Furthermore, microsegmentation or identity-based-segmentation may be utilized in a data center that includes the storage systems or within the cloud services provider, to create secure zones in data centers and cloud deployments that enables the isolation of workloads from one another.

For further explanation, FIG. 3B sets forth a diagram of a storage system 306 in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure. Although depicted in less detail, the storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B may be similar to the storage systems described above with reference to FIGS. 1A-1D and FIGS. 2A-2G as the storage system may include many of the components described above,

The storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B may include a vast amount of storage resources 308, which may be embodied in many forms. For example, the storage resources 308 can include nano-RAM or another form of nonvolatile random access memory that utilizes carbon nanotubes deposited on a substrate, 3D crosspoint non-volatile memory, flash memory including single-level cell (‘SLC’) NAND flash, multi-level cell (‘MLC’) NAND flash, triple-level cell (‘TLC’) NAND flash, quad-level cell (‘QLC’) NAND flash, or others. Likewise, the storage resources 308 may include non-volatile magnetoresistive random-access memory (‘MRAM’), including spin transfer torque (‘STT’) MRAM. The example storage resources 308 may alternatively include non-volatile phase-change memory (‘PCM’), quantum memory that allows for the storage and retrieval of photonic quantum information, resistive random-access memory (‘ReRAM’), storage class memory (‘SCM’), or other form of storage resources, including any combination of resources described herein. Readers will appreciate that other forms of computer memories and storage devices may be utilized by the storage systems described above, including DRAM, SRAM, EEPROM, universal memory, and many others. The storage resources 308 depicted in FIG. 3A may be embodied in a variety of form factors, including but not limited to, dual in-line memory modules (‘DIMMs’), non-volatile dual in-line memory modules (‘NVDIMMs’), M.2, U.2, and others.

The storage resources 308 depicted in FIG. 3B may include various forms of SCM. SCM may effectively treat fast, non-volatile memory (e.g., NAND flash) as an extension of DRAM such that an entire dataset may be treated as an in-memory dataset that resides entirely in DRAM. SCM may include non-volatile media such as, for example, NAND flash. Such NAND flash may be accessed NVMe that can use the PCIe bus as its transport, providing for relatively low access latencies compared to older protocols. In fact, the network protocols used for SSDs in all-flash arrays can include NVMe using Ethernet (RACE, NVME TOP), Fibre Channel (NVMe FC), InfiniBand (iWARP), and others that make it possible to treat fast, non-volatile memory as an extension of DRAM. In view of the fact that DRAM is often byte-addressable and fast, non-volatile memory such as NAND flash is block-addressable, a controller software/hardware stack may be needed to convert the block data to the bytes that are stored in the media. Examples of media and software that may be used as SCM can include, for example, 3D XPoint, Intel Memory Drive Technology, Samsung's Z-SSD, and others.

The storage resources 308 depicted in FIG. 3B may also include racetrack memory (also referred to as domain-wall memory). Such racetrack memory may be embodied as a form of non-volatile, solid-state memory that relies on the intrinsic strength and orientation of the magnetic field created by an electron as it spins in addition to its electronic charge, in solid-state devices. Through the use of spin-coherent electric current to move magnetic domains along a nanoscopic permalloy wire, the domains may pass by magnetic read/write heads positioned near the wire as current is passed through the wire, which alter the domains to record patterns of bits. In order to create a racetrack memory device, many such wires and read/write elements may be packaged together.

The example storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B may implement a variety of storage architectures. For example, storage systems in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure may utilize block storage where data is stored in blocks, and each block essentially acts as an individual hard drive. Storage systems in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure may utilize object storage, where data is managed as objects. Each object may include the data itself, a variable amount of metadata, and a globally unique identifier, where object storage can be implemented at multiple levels (e.g., device level, system level, interface level). Storage systems in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure utilize file storage in which data is stored in a hierarchical structure. Such data may be saved in files and folders, and presented to both the system storing it and the system retrieving it in the same format.

The example storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B may be embodied as a storage system in which additional storage resources can be added through the use of a scale-up model, additional storage resources can be added through the use of a scale-out model, or through some combination thereof. In a scale-up model, additional storage may be added by adding additional storage devices. In a scale-out model, however, additional storage nodes may be added to a cluster of storage nodes, where such storage nodes can include additional processing resources, additional networking resources, and so on.

The example storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B may leverage the storage resources described above in a variety of different ways. For example, some portion of the storage resources may be utilized to serve as a write cache, storage resources within the storage system may be utilized as a read cache, or tiering may be achieved within the storage systems by placing data within the storage system in accordance with one or more tiering policies.

The storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B also includes communications resources 310 that may be useful in facilitating data communications between components within the storage system 306, as well as data communications between the storage system 306 and computing devices that are outside of the storage system 306, including embodiments where those resources are separated by a relatively vast expanse. The communications resources 310 may be configured to utilize a variety of different protocols and data communication fabrics to facilitate data communications between components within the storage systems as well as computing devices that are outside of the storage system. For example, the communications resources 310 can include fibre channel (‘FC’) technologies such as FC fabrics and FC protocols that can transport SCSI commands over FC network, FC over ethernet (‘FCoE’) technologies through which FC frames are encapsulated and transmitted over Ethernet networks, InfiniBand (‘IB’) technologies in which a switched fabric topology is utilized to facilitate transmissions between channel adapters, NVM Express (‘NVMe’) technologies and NVMe over fabrics (‘NVMeoF’) technologies through which non-volatile storage media attached via a PCI express (‘PCIe’) bus may be accessed, and others. In fact, the storage systems described above may, directly or indirectly, make use of neutrino communication technologies and devices through which information (including binary information) is transmitted using a beam of neutrinos.

The communications resources 310 can also include mechanisms for accessing storage resources 308 within the storage system 306 utilizing serial attached SCSI (‘SAS’), serial ATA (‘SATA’) bus interfaces for connecting storage resources 308 within the storage system 306 to host bus adapters within the storage system 306, internet small computer systems interface (‘iSCSI’) technologies to provide block-level access to storage resources 308 within the storage system 306, and other communications resources that that may be useful in facilitating data communications between components within the storage system 306, as well as data communications between the storage system 306 and computing devices that are outside of the storage system 306.

The storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B also includes processing resources 312 that may be useful in useful in executing computer program instructions and performing other computational tasks within the storage system 306. The processing resources 312 may include one or more ASICs that are customized for some particular purpose as well as one or more CPUs. The processing resources 312 may also include one or more DSPs, one or more FPGAs, one or more systems on a chip (‘SoCs’), or other form of processing resources 312. The storage system 306 may utilize the storage resources 312 to perform a variety of tasks including, but not limited to, supporting the execution of software resources 314 that will be described in greater detail below.

The storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B also includes software resources 314 that, when executed by processing resources 312 within the storage system 306, may perform a vast array of tasks. The software resources 314 may include, for example, one or more modules of computer program instructions that when executed by processing resources 312 within the storage system 306 are useful in carrying out various data protection techniques. Such data protection techniques may be carried out, for example, by system software executing on computer hardware within the storage system, by a cloud services provider, or in other ways. Such data protection techniques can include data archiving, data backup, data replication, data snapshotting, data and database cloning, and other data protection techniques.

The software resources 314 may also include software that is useful in implementing software-defined storage (‘SDS’), In such an example, the software resources 314 may include one or more modules of computer program instructions that, when executed, are useful in policy-based provisioning and management of data storage that is independent of the underlying hardware. Such software resources 314 may be useful in implementing storage virtualization to separate the storage hardware from the software that manages the storage hardware.

The software resources 314 may also include software that is useful in facilitating and optimizing I/O operations that are directed to the storage system 306. For example, the software resources 314 may include software modules that perform various data reduction techniques such as, for example, data compression, data deduplication, and others. The software resources 314 may include software modules that intelligently group together 110 operations to facilitate better usage of the underlying storage resource 308, software modules that perform data migration operations to migrate from within a storage system, as well as software modules that perform other functions. Such software resources 314 may be embodied as one or more software containers or in many other ways.

For further explanation. FIG. 3C sets forth an example of a cloud-based storage system 318 in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure. In the example depicted in FIG. 3C, the cloud-based storage system 318 is created entirely in a cloud computing environment 316 such as, for example, Amazon Web Services (‘AWS’)™, Microsoft Azure™, Google Cloud Platform™, IBM Cloud™, Oracle Cloud™, and others. The cloud-based storage system 318 may be used to provide services similar to the services that may be provided by the storage systems described above.

The cloud-based storage system 318 depicted in FIG. 3C includes two cloud computing instances 320, 322 that each are used to support the execution of a storage controller application 324, 326. The cloud computing instances 320, 322 may be embodied, for example, as instances of cloud computing resources (e.g., virtual machines) that may be provided by the cloud computing environment 316 to support the execution of software applications such as the storage controller application 324, 326. For example, each of the cloud computing instances 320, 322 may execute on an Azure VM, where each Azure VM may include high speed temporary storage that may be leveraged as a cache (e.g., as a read cache). In one embodiment, the cloud computing instances 320, 322 may be embodied as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (‘EC2’) instances. In such an example, an Amazon Machine Image (‘AMI’) that includes the storage controller application 324, 326 may be booted to create and configure a virtual machine that may execute the storage controller application 324, 326.

In the example method depicted in FIG. 3C, the storage controller application 324, 326 may be embodied as a module of computer program instructions that, when executed, carries out various storage tasks. For example, the storage controller application 324, 326 may be embodied as a module of computer program instructions that, when executed, carries out the same tasks as the controllers 110A, 110B in FIG. 1A described above such as writing data to the cloud-based storage system 318, erasing data from the cloud-based storage system 318, retrieving data from the cloud-based storage system 318, monitoring and reporting of storage device utilization and performance, performing redundancy operations, such as RAID or RAID-like data redundancy operations, compressing data, encrypting data, deduplicating data, and so forth. Readers will appreciate that because there are two cloud computing instances 320, 322 that each include the storage controller application 324, 326, in some embodiments one cloud computing instance 320 may operate as the primary controller as described above while the other cloud computing instance 322 may operate as the secondary controller as described above. Readers will appreciate that the storage controller application 324, 326 depicted in FIG. 3C may include identical source code that is executed within different cloud computing instances 320, 322 such as distinct EC2 instances.

Readers will appreciate that other embodiments that do not include a primary and secondary controller are within the scope of the present disclosure. For example, each cloud computing instance 320, 322 may operate as a primary controller for some portion of the address space supported by the cloud-based storage system 318, each cloud computing instance 320, 322 may operate as a primary controller where the servicing of I/O operations directed to the cloud-based storage system 318 are divided in some other way, and so on. In fact, in other embodiments where costs savings may be prioritized over performance demands, only a single cloud computing instance may exist that contains the storage controller application.

The cloud-based storage system 318 depicted in FIG. 3C includes cloud computing instances 340 a, 340 b, 340 n with local storage 330, 334, 338. The cloud computing instances 340 a, 340 b, 340 n may be embodied, for example, as instances of cloud computing resources that may be provided by the cloud computing environment 316 to support the execution of software applications. The cloud computing instances 340 a, 340 b, 340 n of FIG. 3C may differ from the cloud computing instances 320, 322 described above as the cloud computing instances 340 a, 340 b, 340 n of FIG. 3C have local storage 330, 334, 338 resources whereas the cloud computing instances 320, 322 that support the execution of the storage controller application 324, 326 need not have local storage resources. The cloud computing instances 340 a, 340 b, 340 n with local storage 330, 334, 338 may be embodied, for example, as EC2 M5 instances that include one or more SSDs, as EC2 R5 instances that include one or more SSDs, as EC2 I3 instances that include one or more SSDs, and so on. In some embodiments, the local storage 330, 334, 338 must be embodied as solid-state storage (e.g., SSDs) rather than storage that makes use of hard disk drives.

In the example depicted in FIG. 30 , each of the cloud computing instances 340 a, 340 b, 340 n with local storage 330, 334, 338 can include a software daemon 328, 332, 336 that, when executed by a cloud computing instance 340 a, 340 b, 340 n can present itself to the storage controller applications 324, 326 as if the cloud computing instance 340 a, 340 b, 340 n were a physical storage device (e.g., one or more SSDs). In such an example, the software daemon 328, 332, 336 may include computer program instructions similar to those that would normally be contained on a storage device such that the storage controller applications 324, 326 can send and receive the same commands that a storage controller would send to storage devices. In such a way, the storage controller applications 324, 326 may include code that is identical to (or substantially identical to) the code that would be executed by the controllers in the storage systems described above. In these and similar embodiments, communications between the storage controller applications 324, 326 and the cloud computing instances 340 a, 340 b, 340 n with local storage 330, 334, 338 may utilize iSCSI, NVMe over TCP, messaging, a custom protocol, or in some other mechanism.

In the example depicted in FIG. 3C, each of the cloud computing instances 340 a, 340 b, 340 n with local storage 330, 334, 338 may also be coupled to block storage 342, 344, 346 that is offered by the cloud computing environment 316 such as, for example, as Amazon Elastic Block Store (‘EBS’) volumes. In such an example, the block storage 342, 344, 346 that is offered by the cloud computing environment 316 may be utilized in a manner that is similar to how the NVRAM devices described above are utilized, as the software daemon 328, 332, 336 (or some other module) that is executing within a particular cloud comping instance 340 a, 340 b, 340 n may, upon receiving a request to write data, initiate a write of the data to its attached EBS volume as well as a write of the data to its local storage 330, 334, 338 resources. In some alternative embodiments, data may only be written to the local storage 330, 334, 338 resources within a particular cloud comping instance 340 a, 340 b, 340 n. In an alternative embodiment, rather than using the block storage 342. 344, 346 that is offered by the cloud computing environment 316 as NVRAM, actual RAM on each of the cloud computing instances 340 a, 340 b, 340 n with local storage 330, 334, 338 may be used as NVRAM, thereby decreasing network utilization costs that would be associated with using an EBS volume as the NVRAM. In yet another embodiment, high performance block storage resources such as one or more Azure Ultra Disks may be utilized as the NVRAM

When a request to write data is received by a particular cloud computing instance 340 a, 340 b, 340 n with local storage 330, 334, 338, the software daemon 328, 332, 336 may be configured to not only write the data to its own local storage 330, 334, 338 resources and any appropriate block storage 342, 344, 346 resources, but the software daemon 328, 332, 336 may also be configured to write the data to cloud-based object storage 348 that is attached to the particular cloud computing instance 340 a, 340 b, 340 n. The cloud-based object storage 348 that is attached to the particular cloud computing instance 340 a, 340 b, 340 n may be embodied, for example, as Amazon Simple Storage Service (‘S3’). In other embodiments, the cloud computing instances 320, 322 that each include the storage controller application 324, 326 may initiate the storage of the data in the local storage 330, 334, 338 of the cloud computing instances 340 a, 340 b, 340 n and the cloud-based object storage 348. In other embodiments, rather than using both the cloud computing instances 340 a, 340 b, 340 n with local storage 330, 334, 338 (also referred to herein as ‘virtual drives’) and the cloud-based object storage 348 to store data, a persistent storage layer may be implemented in other ways. For example, one or more Azure Ultra disks may be used to persistently store data (e.g., after the data has been written to the NVRAM layer). In an embodiment where one or more Azure Ultra disks may be used to persistently store data, the usage of a cloud-based object storage 348 may be eliminated such that data is only stored persistently in the Azure Ultra disks without also writing the data to an object storage layer.

While the local storage 330, 334, 338 resources and the block storage 342, 344, 346 resources that are utilized by the cloud computing instances 340 a, 340 b, 340 n may support block-level access, the cloud-based object storage 348 that is attached to the particular cloud computing instance 340 a, 340 b, 340 n supports only object-based access. The software daemon 328, 332, 336 may therefore be configured to take blocks of data, package those blocks into objects, and write the objects to the cloud-based object storage 348 that is attached to the particular cloud computing instance 340 a, 340 b, 340 n.

In some embodiments, all data that is stored by the cloud-based storage system 318 may be stored in both: 1) the cloud-based object storage 348, and 2) at least one of the local storage 330, 334, 338 resources or block storage 342, 344, 346 resources that are utilized by the cloud computing instances 340 a, 340 b, 340 n. In such embodiments, the local storage 330, 334, 338 resources and block storage 342, 344, 346 resources that are utilized by the cloud computing instances 340 a, 340 b, 340 n may effectively operate as cache that generally includes all data that is also stored in S3, such that all reads of data may be serviced by the cloud computing instances 340 a, 340 b, 340 n without requiring the cloud computing instances 340 a, 340 b, 340 n to access the cloud-based object storage 348. Readers will appreciate that in other embodiments, however, all data that is stored by the cloud-based storage system 318 may be stored in the cloud-based object storage 348, but less than all data that is stored by the cloud-based storage system 318 may be stored in at least one of the local storage 330, 334, 338 resources or block storage 342, 344, 346 resources that are utilized by the cloud computing instances 340 a, 340 b, 340 n. In such an example, various policies may be utilized to determine which subset of the data that is stored by the cloud-based storage system 318 should reside in both: 1) the cloud-based object storage 348, and 2) at least one of the local storage 330, 334, 338 resources or block storage 342, 344, 346 resources that are utilized by the cloud computing instances 340 a, 340 b, 340 n.

One or more modules of computer program instructions that are executing within the cloud-based storage system 318 (e.g., a monitoring module that is executing on its own EC2 instance) may be designed to handle the failure of one or more of the cloud computing instances 340 a, 340 b, 340 n with local storage 330, 334, 338. In such an example, the monitoring module may handle the failure of one or more of the cloud computing instances 340 a, 340 b, 340 n with local storage 330, 334, 338 by creating one or more new cloud computing instances with local storage, retrieving data that was stored on the failed cloud computing instances 340 a, 340 b, 340 n from the cloud-based object storage 348, and storing the data retrieved from the cloud-based object storage 348 in local storage on the newly created cloud computing instances. Readers will appreciate that many variants of this process may be implemented.

Readers will appreciate that various performance aspects of the cloud-based storage system 318 may be monitored (e.g., by a monitoring module that is executing in an EC2 instance) such that the cloud-based storage system 318 can be scaled-up or scaled-out as needed. For example, if the cloud computing instances 320, 322 that are used to support the execution of a storage controller application 324, 326 are undersized and not sufficiently servicing the I/O requests that are issued by users of the cloud-based storage system 318, a monitoring module may create a new, more powerful cloud computing instance (e.g., a cloud computing instance of a type that includes more processing power, more memory, etc . . . ) that includes the storage controller application such that the new, more powerful cloud computing instance can begin operating as the primary controller. Likewise, if the monitoring module determines that the cloud computing instances 320, 322 that are used to support the execution of a storage controller application 324, 326 are oversized and that cost savings could be gained by switching to a smaller, less powerful cloud computing instance, the monitoring module may create a new, less powerful (and less expensive) cloud computing instance that includes the storage controller application such that the new, less powerful cloud computing instance can begin operating as the primary controller.

The storage systems described above may carry out intelligent data backup techniques through which data stored in the storage system may be copied and stored in a distinct location to avoid data loss in the event of equipment failure or some other form of catastrophe. For example, the storage systems described above may be configured to examine each backup to avoid restoring the storage system to an undesirable state. Consider an example in which malware infects the storage system. In such an example, the storage system may include software resources 314 that can scan each backup to identify backups that were captured before the malware infected the storage system and those backups that were captured after the malware infected the storage system. In such an example, the storage system may restore itself from a backup that does not include the malware—or at least not restore the portions of a backup that contained the malware, In such an example, the storage system may include software resources 314 that can scan each backup to identify the presences of malware (or a virus, or some other undesirable), for example, by identifying write operations that were serviced by the storage system and originated from a network subnet that is suspected to have delivered the malware, by identifying write operations that were serviced by the storage system and originated from a user that is suspected to have delivered the malware, by identifying write operations that were serviced by the storage system and examining the content of the write operation against fingerprints of the malware, and in many other ways.

Readers Will further appreciate that the backups (often in the form of one or more snapshots) may also be utilized to perform rapid recovery of the storage system. Consider an example in which the storage system is infected with ransomware that locks users out of the storage system. In such an example, software resources 314 within the storage system may be configured to detect the presence of ransomware and may be further configured to restore the storage system to a point-in-time, using the retained backups, prior to the point-in-time at which the ransomware infected the storage system. In such an example, the presence of ransomware may be explicitly detected through the use of software tools utilized by the system, through the use of a key (e.g., a USB drive) that is inserted into the storage system, or in a similar way. Likewise, the presence of ransomware may be inferred in response to system activity meeting a predetermined fingerprint such as, for example, no reads or writes coming into the system for a predetermined period of time.

Readers will appreciate that the various components described above may be grouped into one or more optimized computing packages as converged infrastructures. Such converged infrastructures may include pools of computers, storage and networking resources that can be shared by multiple applications and managed in a collective manner using policy-driven processes. Such converged infrastructures may be implemented with a converged infrastructure reference architecture, with standalone appliances, with a software driven hyper-converged approach (e.g., hyper-converged infrastructures), or in other ways.

Readers will appreciate that the storage systems described in this disclosure may be useful for supporting various types of software applications. In fact, the storage systems may be ‘application aware’ in the sense that the storage systems may obtain, maintain, or otherwise have access to information describing connected applications (e.g., applications that utilize the storage systems) to optimize the operation of the storage system based on intelligence about the applications and their utilization patterns. For example, the storage system may optimize data layouts, optimize caching behaviors, optimize ‘QoS’ levels, or perform some other optimization that is designed to improve the storage performance that is experienced by the application.

As an example of one type of application that may be supported by the storage systems describe herein, the storage system 306 may be useful in supporting artificial intelligence (‘AI’) applications, database applications, XOps projects (e.g., DevOps projects, DataOps projects, MLOps projects, ModelOps projects, PlatformOps projects), electronic design automation tools, event-driven software applications, high performance computing applications, simulation applications, high-speed data capture and analysis applications, machine learning applications, media production applications, media serving applications, picture archiving and communication systems (‘PACS’) applications, software development applications, virtual reality applications, augmented reality applications, and many other types of applications by providing storage resources to such applications,

In view of the fact that the storage systems include compute resources, storage resources, and a wide variety of other resources, the storage systems may be well suited to support applications that are resource intensive such as, for example, AI applications, AI applications may be deployed in a variety of fields, including: predictive maintenance in manufacturing and related fields, healthcare applications such as patient data & risk analytics, retail and marketing deployments (e.g., search advertising, social media advertising), supply chains solutions, fintech solutions such as business analytics & reporting tools, operational deployments such as real-time analytics tools, application performance management tools, IT infrastructure management tools, and many others.

Such AI applications may enable devices to perceive their environment and take actions that maximize their chance of success at some goal, Examples of such AI applications can include IBM Watson™, Microsoft Oxford™, Google DeepMind™, Baidu Minwa™, and others.

The storage systems described above may also be well suited to support other types of applications that are resource intensive such as, for example, machine learning applications. Machine learning applications may perform various types of data analysis to automate analytical model building. Using algorithms that iteratively learn from data, machine learning applications can enable computers to learn without being explicitly programmed. One particular area of machine learning is referred to as reinforcement learning, which involves taking suitable actions to maximize reward in a particular situation.

In addition to the resources already described, the storage systems described above may also include graphics processing units (‘GPUs’), occasionally referred to as visual processing unit (‘VPUs’). Such CPUs may be embodied as specialized electronic circuits that rapidly manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. Such GPUs may be included within any of the computing devices that are part of the storage systems described above, including as one of many individually scalable components of a storage system, where other examples of individually scalable components of such storage system can include storage components, memory components, compute components (e.g., CPUs, FPGAs, ASICs), networking components, software components, and others. In addition to CPUs, the storage systems described above may also include neural network processors (‘NNPs’) for use in various aspects of neural network processing. Such NNPs may be used in place of (or in addition to) CPUs and may also be independently scalable.

As described above, the storage systems described herein may be configured to support artificial intelligence applications, machine learning applications, big data analytics applications, and many other types of applications. The rapid growth in these sort of applications is being driven by three technologies: deep learning (DL), CPU processors, and Big Data. Deep learning is a computing model that makes use of massively parallel neural networks inspired by the human brain. Instead of experts handcrafting software, a deep learning model writes its own software by learning from lots of examples. Such GPUs may include thousands of cores that are well-suited to run algorithms that loosely represent the parallel nature of the human brain.

Advances in deep neural networks, including the development of multi-layer neural networks, have ignited a new wave of algorithms and tools for data scientists to tap into their data with artificial intelligence (AI). With improved algorithms, larger data sets, and various frameworks (including open-source software libraries for machine learning across a range of tasks), data scientists are tackling new use cases like autonomous driving vehicles, natural language processing and understanding, computer vision, machine reasoning, strong AI, and many others. Applications of AI techniques have materialized in a wide array of products include, for example, Amazon Echo's speech recognition technology that allows users to talk to their machines, Google Translate™ which allows for machine-based language translation, Spotify's Discover Weekly that provides recommendations on new songs and artists that a user may like based on the user's usage and traffic analysis, Quill's text generation offering that takes structured data and turns it into narrative stories, Chatbots that provide real-time, contextually specific answers to questions in a dialog format, and many others.

Data is the heart of modern AI and deep learning algorithms. Before training can begin, one problem that must be addressed revolves around collecting the labeled data that is crucial for training an accurate AI model. A full scale AI deployment may be required to continuously collect, clean, transform, label, and store large amounts of data, Adding additional high quality data points directly translates to more accurate models and better insights. Data samples may undergo a series of processing steps including, but not limited to: 1) ingesting the data from an external source into the training system and storing the data in raw form, 2) cleaning and transforming the data in a format convenient for training, including linking data samples to the appropriate label, 3) exploring parameters and models, quickly testing with a smaller dataset, and iterating to converge on the most promising models to push into the production cluster, 4) executing training phases to select random batches of input data, including both new and older samples, and feeding those into production GPU servers for computation to update model parameters, and 5) evaluating including using a holdback portion of the data not used in training in order to evaluate model accuracy on the holdout data. This lifecycle may apply for any type of parallelized machine learning, not just neural networks or deep learning. For example, standard machine learning frameworks may rely on CPUs instead of GPUs but the data ingest and training workflows may be the same. Readers will appreciate that a single shared storage data hub creates a coordination point throughout the lifecycle without the need for extra data copies among the ingest, preprocessing, and training stages. Rarely is the ingested data used for only one purpose, and shared storage gives the flexibility to train multiple different models or apply traditional analytics to the data.

Readers will appreciate that each stage in the AI data pipeline may have varying requirements from the data hub (e.g., the storage system or collection of storage systems). Scale-out storage systems must deliver uncompromising performance for all manner of access types and patterns—from small, metadata-heavy to large files, from random to sequential access patterns, and from low to high concurrency. The storage systems described above may serve as an ideal AI data hub as the systems may service unstructured workloads. In the first stage, data is ideally ingested and stored on to the same data hub that following stages will use, in order to avoid excess data copying, The next two steps can be done on a standard compute server that optionally includes a GPU, and then in the fourth and last stage, full training production jobs are run on powerful GPU-accelerated servers. Often, there is a production pipeline alongside an experimental pipeline operating on the same dataset. Further, the GPU-accelerated servers can be used independently for different models or joined together to train on one larger model, even spanning multiple systems for distributed training. If the shared storage tier is slow, then data must be copied to local storage for each phase, resulting in wasted time staging data onto different servers. The ideal data hub for the AI training pipeline delivers performance similar to data stored locally on the server node while also having the simplicity and performance to enable all pipeline stages to operate concurrently.

In order for the storage systems described above to serve as a data hub or as part of an AI deployment, in some embodiments the storage systems may be configured to provide DMA between storage devices that are included in the storage systems and one or more GPUs that are used in an AI or big data analytics pipeline. The one or more GPUs may be coupled to the storage system, for example, via NVMe-over-Fabrics (‘NVMe-oF’) such that bottlenecks such as the host CPU can be bypassed and the storage system (or one of the components contained therein) can directly access GPU memory. In such an example, the storage systems may leverage API hooks to the GPUs to transfer data directly to the CPUs. For example, the GPUs may be embodied as Nvidia™ CPUs and the storage systems may support GPUDirect Storage (‘GDS’) software, or have similar proprietary software, that enables the storage system to transfer data to the CPUs via RDMA or similar mechanism.

Although the preceding paragraphs discuss deep learning applications, readers will appreciate that the storage systems described herein may also be part of a distributed deep learning (‘DDL’) platform to support the execution of DDL algorithms. The storage systems described above may also be paired with other technologies such as TensorFlow, an open-source software library for dataflow programming across a range of tasks that may be used for machine learning applications such as neural networks, to facilitate the development of such machine learning models, applications, and so on.

The storage systems described above may also be used in a neuromorphic computing environment. Neuromorphic computing is a form of computing that mimics brain cells. To support neuromorphic computing, an architecture of interconnected “neurons” replace traditional computing models with low-powered signals that go directly between neurons for more efficient computation. Neuromorphic computing may make use of very-large-scale integration (VLSI) systems containing electronic analog circuits to mimic neuro-biological architectures present in the nervous system, as well as analog, digital, mixed-mode analog/digital VLSI, and software systems that implement models of neural systems for perception, motor control, or multisensory integration.

Readers will appreciate that the storage systems described above may be configured to support the storage or use of (among other types of data) blockchains and derivative items such as, for example, open source blockchains and related tools that are part of the IBM™ Hyperledger project, permissioned blockchains in which a certain number of trusted parties are allowed to access the block chain, blockchain products that enable developers to build their own distributed ledger projects, and others. Blockchains and the storage systems described herein may be leveraged to support on-chain storage of data as well as off-chain storage of data.

Off-chain storage of data can be implemented in a variety of ways and can occur when the data itself is not stored within the blockchain. For example, in one embodiment, a hash function may be utilized and the data itself may be fed into the hash function to generate a hash value. In such an example, the hashes of large pieces of data may be embedded within transactions, instead of the data itself. Readers will appreciate that, in other embodiments, alternatives to blockchains may be used to facilitate the decentralized storage of information. For example, one alternative to a blockchain that may be used is a blockweave. While conventional blockchains store every transaction to achieve validation, a blockweave permits secure decentralization without the usage of the entire chain, thereby enabling low cost on-chain storage of data. Such blockweaves may utilize a consensus mechanism that is based on proof of access (PoA) and proof of work (PoW).

The storage systems described above may, either alone or in combination with other computing devices, be used to support in-memory computing applications. In-memory computing involves the storage of information in RAM that is distributed across a cluster of computers. Readers will appreciate that the storage systems described above, especially those that are configurable with customizable amounts of processing resources, storage resources, and memory resources (e.g., those systems in which blades that contain configurable amounts of each type of resource), may be configured in a way so as to provide an infrastructure that can support in-memory computing. Likewise, the storage systems described above may include component parts (e.g., NVDIMMs, 3D crosspoint storage that provide fast random access memory that is persistent) that can actually provide for an improved in-memory computing environment as compared to in-memory computing environments that rely on RAM distributed across dedicated servers.

In some embodiments, the storage systems described above may be configured to operate as a hybrid in-memory computing environment that includes a universal interface to all storage media (e.g., RAM, flash storage, 3D crosspoint storage). In such embodiments, users may have no knowledge regarding the details of where their data is stored but they can still use the same full, unified API to address data. In such embodiments, the storage system may (in the background) move data to the fastest layer available—including intelligently placing the data in dependence upon various characteristics of the data or in dependence upon some other heuristic. In such an example, the storage systems may even make use of existing products such as Apache Ignite and GridGain to move data between the various storage layers, or the storage systems may make use of custom software to move data between the various storage layers. The storage systems described herein may implement various optimizations to improve the performance of in-memory computing such as, for example, having computations occur as close to the data as possible.

Readers will further appreciate that in some embodiments, the storage systems described above may be paired with other resources to support the applications described above. For example, one infrastructure could include primary compute in the form of servers and workstations which specialize in using General-purpose computing on graphics processing units (‘GPGPU’) to accelerate deep learning applications that are interconnected into a computation engine to train parameters for deep neural networks. Each system may have Ethernet external connectivity, InfiniBand external connectivity, some other form of external connectivity, or some combination thereof. In such an example, the GPUs can be grouped for a single large training or used independently to train multiple models. The infrastructure could also include a storage system such as those described above to provide, for example, a scale-out all-flash file or object store through which data can be accessed via high-performance protocols such as NFS, S3, and so on. The infrastructure can also include, for example, redundant top-of-rack Ethernet switches connected to storage and compute via ports in MLAG port channels for redundancy. The infrastructure could also include additional compute in the form of whitebox servers, optionally with GPUs, for data ingestion, pre-processing, and model debugging. Readers will appreciate that additional infrastructures are also be possible.

Readers will appreciate that the storage systems described above, either alone or in coordination with other computing machinery may be configured to support other AI related tools. For example, the storage systems may make use of tools like ONXX or other open neural network exchange formats that make it easier to transfer models written in different AI frameworks. Likewise, the storage systems may be configured to support tools like Amazon's Gluon that allow developers to prototype, build, and train deep learning models. In fact, the storage systems described above may be part of a larger platform, such as IBM™ Cloud Private for Data, that includes integrated data science, data engineering and application building services.

Readers will further appreciate that the storage systems described above may also be deployed as an edge solution. Such an edge solution may be in place to optimize cloud computing systems by performing data processing at the edge of the network, near the source of the data. Edge computing can push applications, data and computing power (i.e., services) away from centralized points to the logical extremes of a network. Through the use of edge solutions such as the storage systems described above, computational tasks may be performed using the compute resources provided by such storage systems, data may be storage using the storage resources of the storage system, and cloud-based services may be accessed through the use of various resources of the storage system (including networking resources). By performing computational tasks on the edge solution, storing data on the edge solution, and generally making use of the edge solution, the consumption of expensive cloud-based resources may be avoided and, in fact, performance improvements may be experienced relative to a heavier reliance on cloud-based resources.

While many tasks may benefit from the utilization of an edge solution, some particular uses may be especially suited for deployment in such an environment. For example, devices like drones, autonomous cars, robots, and others may require extremely rapid processing—so fast, in fact, that sending data up to a cloud environment and back to receive data processing support may simply be too slow. As an additional example, some loT devices such as connected video cameras may not be well-suited for the utilization of cloud-based resources as it may be impractical (not only from a privacy perspective, security perspective, or a financial perspective) to send the data to the cloud simply because of the pure volume of data that is involved. As such, many tasks that really on data processing, storage, or communications may be better suited by platforms that include edge solutions such as the storage systems described above.

The storage systems described above may alone, or in combination with other computing resources, serves as a network edge platform that combines compute resources, storage resources, networking resources, cloud technologies and network virtualization technologies, and so on. As part of the network, the edge may take on characteristics similar to other network facilities, from the customer premise and backhaul aggregation facilities to Points of Presence (PoPs) and regional data centers. Readers will appreciate that network workloads, such as Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) and others, will reside on the network edge platform. Enabled by a combination of containers and virtual machines, the network edge platform may rely on controllers and schedulers that are no longer geographically co-located with the data processing resources. The functions, as microservices, may split into control planes, user and data planes, or even state machines, allowing for independent optimization and scaling techniques to be applied. Such user and data planes may be enabled through increased accelerators, both those residing in server platforms, such as FPGAs and Smart NICs, and through SDN-enabled merchant silicon and programmable ASICs.

The storage systems described above may also be optimized for use in big data analytics, including being leveraged as part of a composable data analytics pipeline where containerized analytics architectures, for example, make analytics capabilities more composable. Big data analytics may be generally described as the process of examining large and varied data sets to uncover hidden patterns, unknown correlations, market trends, customer preferences and other useful information that can help organizations make more-informed business decisions. As part of that process, semi-structured and unstructured data such as, for example, internet clickstream data, web server logs, social media content, text from customer emails and survey responses, mobile-phone call-detail records, IoT sensor data, and other data may be converted to a structured form.

The storage systems described above may also support (including implementing as a system interface) applications that perform tasks in response to human speech. For example, the storage systems may support the execution intelligent personal assistant applications such as, for example, Amazon's Alexa™, Apple Siri™, Google Voice™, Samsung Bixby™, Microsoft Cortana™, and others. While the examples described in the previous sentence make use of voice as input, the storage systems described above may also support chatbots, talkbots, chatterbots, or artificial conversational entities or other applications that are configured to conduct a conversation via auditory or textual methods. Likewise, the storage system may actually execute such an application to enable a user such as a system administrator to interact with the storage system via speech. Such applications are generally capable of voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic, and other real time information, such as news, although in embodiments in accordance with the present disclosure, such applications may be utilized as interfaces to various system management operations.

The storage systems described above may also implement AI platforms for delivering on the vision of self-driving storage. Such AI platforms may be configured to deliver global predictive intelligence by collecting and analyzing large amounts of storage system telemetry data points to enable effortless management, analytics and support. In fact, such storage systems may be capable of predicting both capacity and performance, as well as generating intelligent advice on workload deployment, interaction and optimization. Such AI platforms may be configured to scan all incoming storage system telemetry data against a library of issue fingerprints to predict and resolve incidents in real-time, before they impact customer environments, and captures hundreds of variables related to performance that are used to forecast performance load.

The storage systems described above may support the serialized or simultaneous execution of artificial intelligence applications, machine learning applications, data analytics applications, data transformations, and other tasks that collectively may form an AI ladder. Such an AI ladder may effectively be formed by combining such elements to form a complete data science pipeline, where exist dependencies between elements of the AI ladder. For example, AI may require that some form of machine learning has taken place, machine learning may require that some form of analytics has taken place, analytics may require that some form of data and information architecting has taken place, and so on. As such, each element may be viewed as a rung in an AI ladder that collectively can form a complete and sophisticated AI solution.

The storage systems described above may also, either alone or in combination with other computing environments, be used to deliver an AI everywhere experience where AI permeates wide and expansive aspects of business and life. For example, AI may play an important role in the delivery of deep learning solutions, deep reinforcement learning solutions, artificial general intelligence solutions, autonomous vehicles, cognitive computing solutions, commercial UAVs or drones, conversational user interfaces, enterprise taxonomies, ontology management solutions, machine learning solutions, smart dust, smart robots, smart workplaces, and many others.

The storage systems described above may also, either alone or in combination with other computing environments, be used to deliver a wide range of transparently immersive experiences (including those that use digital twins of various “things” such as people, places, processes, systems, and so on) where technology can introduce transparency between people, businesses, and things. Such transparently immersive experiences may be delivered as augmented reality technologies, connected homes, virtual reality technologies, brain-computer interfaces, human augmentation technologies, nanotube electronics, volumetric displays, 4D printing technologies, or others.

The storage systems described above may also, either alone or in combination with other computing environments, be used to support a wide variety of digital platforms. Such digital platforms can include, for example, 5G wireless systems and platforms, digital twin platforms, edge computing platforms, LoT platforms, quantum computing platforms, serverless PaaS, software-defined security, neuromorphic computing platforms, and so on.

The storage systems described above may also be part of a multi-cloud environment in which multiple cloud computing and storage services are deployed in a single heterogeneous architecture. In order to facilitate the operation of such a multi-cloud environment, DevOps tools may be deployed to enable orchestration across clouds. Likewise, continuous development and continuous integration tools may be deployed to standardize processes around continuous integration and delivery, new feature rollout and provisioning cloud workloads. By standardizing these processes, a multi-cloud strategy may be implemented that enables the utilization of the best provider for each workload,

The storage systems described above may be used as a part of a platform to enable the use of crypto-anchors that may be used to authenticate a product's origins and contents to ensure that it matches a blockchain record associated with the product. Similarly, as part of a suite of tools to secure data stored on the storage system, the storage systems described above may implement various encryption technologies and schemes, including lattice cryptography. Lattice cryptography can involve constructions of cryptographic primitives that involve lattices, either in the construction itself or in the security proof. Unlike public-key schemes such as the RSA, Diffie-Hellman or Elliptic-Curve cryptosystems, which are easily attacked by a quantum computer, some lattice-based constructions appear to be resistant to attack by both classical and quantum computers.

A quantum computer is a device that performs quantum computing. Quantum computing is computing using quantum-mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement. Quantum computers differ from traditional computers that are based on transistors, as such traditional computers require that data be encoded into binary digits (bits), each of which is always in one of two definite states (0 or 1). In contrast to traditional computers, quantum computers use quantum bits, which can be in superpositions of states. A quantum computer maintains a sequence of qubits, where a single qubit can represent a one, a zero, or any quantum superposition of those two qubit states. A pair of qubits can be in any quantum superposition of 4 states, and three qubits in any superposition of 8 states. A quantum computer with n qubits can generally be in an arbitrary superposition of up to 2{circumflex over ( )}n different states simultaneously, whereas a traditional computer can only be in one of these states at any one time. A quantum Turing machine is a theoretical model of such a computer.

The storage systems described above may also be paired with FPGA-accelerated servers as part of a larger AI or ML infrastructure. Such FPGA-accelerated servers may reside near (e.g., in the same data center) the storage systems described above or even incorporated into an appliance that includes one or more storage systems, one or more FPGA-accelerated servers, networking infrastructure that supports communications between the one or more storage systems and the one or more FPGA-accelerated servers, as well as other hardware and software components. Alternatively, FPGA-accelerated servers may reside within a cloud computing environment that may be used to perform compute-related tasks for AI and ML jobs. Any of the embodiments described above may be used to collectively serve as a FPGA-based AI or ML platform. Readers will appreciate that, in some embodiments of the FPGA-based AI or ML platform, the FPGAs that are contained within the FPGA-accelerated servers may be reconfigured for different types of ML models (e.g., LSTMs, CNNs, GRUs). The ability to reconfigure the FPGAs that are contained within the FPGA-accelerated servers may enable the acceleration of a ML or AI application based on the most optimal numerical precision and memory model being used. Readers will appreciate that by treating the collection of FPGA-accelerated servers as a pool of FPGAs, any CPU in the data center may utilize the pool of FPGAs as a shared hardware microservice, rather than limiting a server to dedicated accelerators plugged into it.

The FPGA-accelerated servers and the GPU-accelerated servers described above may implement a model of computing where, rather than keeping a small amount of data in a CPU and running a long stream of instructions over it as occurred in more traditional computing models, the machine learning model and parameters are pinned into the high-bandwidth on-chip memory with lots of data streaming though the high-bandwidth on-chip memory. FPGAs may even be more efficient than GPUs for this computing model, as the FPGAs can be programmed with only the instructions needed to run this kind of computing model.

The storage systems described above may be configured to provide parallel storage, for example, through the use of a parallel file system such as BeeGFS. Such parallel files systems may include a distributed metadata architecture. For example, the parallel file system may include a plurality of metadata servers across which metadata is distributed, as well as components that include services for clients and storage servers.

The systems described above can support the execution of a wide array of software applications. Such software applications can be deployed in a variety of ways, including container-based deployment models. Containerized applications may be managed using a variety of tools. For example, containerized applications may be managed using Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, and others. Containerized applications may be used to facilitate a serverless, cloud native computing deployment and management model for software applications. In support of a serverless, cloud native computing deployment and management model for software applications, containers may be used as part of an event handling mechanisms (e.g., AWS Lambdas) such that various events cause a containerized application to be spun up to operate as an event handler.

The systems described above may be deployed in a variety of ways, including being deployed in ways that support fifth generation (‘5G’) networks, 5G networks may support substantially faster data communications than previous generations of mobile communications networks and, as a consequence may lead to the disaggregation of data and computing resources as modern massive data centers may become less prominent and may be replaced, for example, by more-local, micro data centers that are close to the mobile-network towers. The systems described above may be included in such local, micro data centers and may be part of or paired to multi-access edge computing (‘MEC’) systems. Such MEC systems may enable cloud computing capabilities and an IT service environment at the edge of the cellular network. By running applications and performing related processing tasks closer to the cellular customer, network congestion may be reduced and applications may perform better.

The storage systems described above may also be configured to implement NVMe Zoned Namespaces. Through the use of NVMe Zoned Namespaces, the logical address space of a namespace is divided into zones. Each zone provides a logical block address range that must be written sequentially and explicitly reset before rewriting, thereby enabling the creation of namespaces that expose the natural boundaries of the device and offload management of internal mapping tables to the host. In order to implement NVMe Zoned Name Spaces (‘ZNS’), ZNS SSDs or some other form of zoned block devices may be utilized that expose a namespace logical address space using zones. With the zones aligned to the internal physical properties of the device, several inefficiencies in the placement of data can be eliminated. In such embodiments, each zone may be mapped, for example, to a separate application such that functions like wear levelling and garbage collection could be performed on a per-zone or per-application basis rather than across the entire device. In order to support ZNS, the storage controllers described herein may be configured with to interact with zoned block devices through the usage of, for example, the Linux™ kernel zoned block device interface or other tools,

The storage systems described above may also be configured to implement zoned storage in other ways such as, for example, through the usage of shingled magnetic recording (SMR) storage devices. In examples where zoned storage is used, device-managed embodiments may be deployed where the storage devices hide this complexity by managing it in the firmware, presenting an interface like any other storage device. Alternatively, zoned storage may be implemented via a host-managed embodiment that depends on the operating system to know how to handle the drive, and only write sequentially to certain regions of the drive. Zoned storage may similarly be implemented using a host-aware embodiment in which a combination of a drive managed and host managed implementation is deployed.

The storage systems described herein may be used to form a data lake. A data lake may operate as the first place that an organization's data flows to, where such data may be in a raw format. Metadata tagging may be implemented to facilitate searches of data elements in the data lake, especially in embodiments where the data lake contains multiple stores of data, in formats not easily accessible or readable (e.g., unstructured data, semi-structured data, structured data). From the data lake, data may go downstream to a data warehouse where data may be stored in a more processed, packaged, and consumable format. The storage systems described above may also be used to implement such a data warehouse, In addition, a data mart or data hub may allow for data that is even more easily consumed, where the storage systems described above may also be used to provide the underlying storage resources necessary for a data mart or data hub. In embodiments, queries the data lake may require a schema-on-read approach, where data is applied to a plan or schema as it is pulled out of a stored location, rather than as it goes into the stored location.

The storage systems described herein may also be configured implement a recovery point objective (‘RPO’), which may be establish by a user, established by an administrator, established as a system default, established as part of a storage class or service that the storage system is participating in the delivery of, or in some other way. A “recovery point objective” is a goal for the maximum time difference between the last update to a source dataset and the last recoverable replicated dataset update that would be correctly recoverable, given a reason to do so, from a continuously or frequently updated copy of the source dataset. An update is correctly recoverable if it properly takes into account all updates that were processed on the source dataset prior to the last recoverable replicated dataset update.

In synchronous replication, the RPO would be zero, meaning that under normal operation, all completed updates on the source dataset should be present and correctly recoverable on the copy dataset. In best effort nearly synchronous replication, the RPO can be as low as a few seconds. In snapshot-based replication, the RPO can be roughly calculated as the interval between snapshots plus the time to transfer the modifications between a previous already transferred snapshot and the most recent to-be-replicated snapshot.

If updates accumulate faster than they are replicated, then an RPO can be missed. If more data to be replicated accumulates between two snapshots, for snapshot-based replication, than can be replicated between taking the snapshot and replicating that snapshot's cumulative updates to the copy, then the RPO can be missed. If, again in snapshot-based replication, data to be replicated accumulates at a faster rate than could be transferred in the time between subsequent snapshots, then replication can start to fall further behind which can extend the miss between the expected recovery point objective and the actual recovery point that is represented by the last correctly replicated update.

The storage systems described above may also be part of a shared nothing storage cluster. In a shared nothing storage cluster, each node of the cluster has local storage and communicates with other nodes in the cluster through networks, where the storage used by the cluster is (in general) provided only by the storage connected to each individual node. A collection of nodes that are synchronously replicating a dataset may be one example of a shared nothing storage cluster, as each storage system has local storage and communicates to other storage systems through a network, where those storage systems do not (in general) use storage from somewhere else that they share access to through some kind of interconnect. In contrast, some of the storage systems described above are themselves built as a shared-storage cluster, since there are drive shelves that are shared by the paired controllers. Other storage systems described above, however, are built as a shared nothing storage cluster, as all storage is local to a particular node (e.g., a blade) and all communication is through networks that link the compute nodes together.

In other embodiments, other forms of a shared nothing storage duster can include embodiments where any node in the duster has a local copy of all storage they need, and where data is mirrored through a synchronous style of replication to other nodes in the cluster either to ensure that the data isn't lost or because other nodes are also using that storage. In such an embodiment, if a new cluster node needs some data, that data can be copied to the new node from other nodes that have copies of the data.

In some embodiments, mirror-copy-based shared storage clusters may store multiple copies of all the cluster's stored data, with each subset of data replicated to a particular set of nodes, and different subsets of data replicated to different sets of nodes. In some variations, embodiments may store all of the cluster's stored data in all nodes, whereas in other variations nodes may be divided up such that a first set of nodes will all store the same set of data and a second, different set of nodes will all store a different set of data.

Readers will appreciate that RAFT-based databases (e.g., etcd) may operate like shared-nothing storage clusters where all RAFT nodes store all data. The amount of data stored in a RAFT cluster, however, may be limited so that extra copies don't consume too much storage. A container server cluster might also be able to replicate all data to all cluster nodes, presuming the containers don't tend to be too large and their bulk data (the data manipulated by the applications that run in the containers) is stored elsewhere such as in an S3 cluster or an external file server. In such an example, the container storage may be provided by the cluster directly through its shared-nothing storage model, with those containers providing the images that form the execution environment for parts of an application or service.

For further explanation. FIG. 3D illustrates an exemplary computing device 350 that may be specifically configured to perform one or more of the processes described herein. As shown in FIG. 3D, computing device 350 may include a communication interface 352, a processor 354, a storage device 356, and an input/output (“I/O”) module 358 communicatively connected one to another via a communication infrastructure 360. While an exemplary computing device 350 is shown in FIG. 3D, the components illustrated in FIG. 3D are not intended to be limiting, Additional or alternative components may be used in other embodiments. Components of computing device 350 shown in FIG. 3D will now be described in additional detail.

Communication interface 352 may be configured to communicate with one or more computing devices. Examples of communication interface 352 include, without limitation, a wired network interface (such as a network interface card), a wireless network interface (such as a wireless network interface card), a modem, an audio/video connection, and any other suitable interface.

Processor 354 generally represents any type or form of processing unit capable of processing data and/or interpreting, executing, and/or directing execution of one or more of the instructions, processes, and/or operations described herein. Processor 354 may perform operations by executing computer-executable instructions 362 (e.g., an application, software, code, and/or other executable data instance) stored in storage device 356.

Storage device 356 may include one or more data storage media, devices, or configurations and may employ any type, form, and combination of data storage media and/or device. For example, storage device 356 may include, but is not limited to, any combination of the nonvolatile media and/or volatile media described herein. Electronic data, including data described herein, may be temporarily and/or permanently stored in storage device 356. For example, data representative of computer-executable instructions 362 configured to direct processor 354 to perform any of the operations described herein may be stored within storage device 356, In some examples, data may be arranged in one or more databases residing within storage device 356.

I/O module 358 may include one or more I/O modules configured to receive user input and provide user output. I/O module 358 may include any hardware, firmware, software, or combination thereof supportive of input and output capabilities. For example, I/O module 358 may include hardware and/or software for capturing user input, including, but not limited to, a keyboard or keypad, a touchscreen component (e.g., touchscreen display), a receiver (e.g., an RF or infrared receiver), motion sensors, and/or one or more input buttons.

I/O module 358 may include one or more devices for presenting output to a user, including, but not limited to, a graphics engine, a display (e.g., a display screen), one or more output drivers (e.g., display drivers), one or more audio speakers, and one or more audio drivers. In certain embodiments, I/O module 358 is configured to provide graphical data to a display for presentation to a user. The graphical data may be representative of one or more graphical user interfaces and/or any other graphical content as may serve a particular implementation. In some examples, any of the systems, computing devices, and/or other components described herein may be implemented by computing device 350.

For further explanation, FIG. 3E illustrates an example of a fleet of storage systems 376 for providing storage services (also referred to herein as ‘data services’). The fleet of storage systems 376 depicted in FIG. 3E includes a plurality of storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n that may each be similar to the storage systems described herein. The storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n in the fleet of storage systems 376 may be embodied as identical storage systems or as different types of storage systems. For example, two of the storage systems 374 a, 374 n depicted in FIG. 3E are depicted as being cloud-based storage systems, as the resources that collectively form each of the storage systems 374 a, 374 n are provided by distinct cloud services providers 370, 372. For example, the first cloud services provider 370 may be Amazon AWS™ whereas the second cloud services provider 372 is Microsoft Azure™, although in other embodiments one or more public clouds, private clouds, or combinations thereof may be used to provide the underlying resources that are used to form a particular storage system in the fleet of storage systems 376.

The example depicted in FIG. 3E includes an edge management service 366 for delivering storage services in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure. The storage services (also referred to herein as ‘data services’) that are delivered may include, for example, services to provide a certain amount of storage to a consumer, services to provide storage to a consumer in accordance with a predetermined service level agreement, services to provide storage to a consumer in accordance with predetermined regulatory requirements, and many others.

The edge management service 366 depicted in FIG. 3E may be embodied, for example, as one or more modules of computer program instructions executing on computer hardware such as one or more computer processors. Alternatively, the edge management service 366 may be embodied as one or more modules of computer program instructions executing on a virtualized execution environment such as one or more virtual machines, in one or more containers, or in some other way. In other embodiments, the edge management service 366 may be embodied as a combination of the embodiments described above, including embodiments where the one or more modules of computer program instructions that are included in the edge management service 366 are distributed across multiple physical or virtual execution environments.

The edge management service 366 may operate as a gateway for providing storage services to storage consumers, where the storage services leverage storage offered by one or more storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n. For example, the edge management service 366 may be configured to provide storage services to host devices 378 a, 378 b, 378 c, 378 d, 378 n that are executing one or more applications that consume the storage services. In such an example, the edge management service 366 may operate as a gateway between the host devices 378 a, 378 b, 378 c, 378 d, 378 n and the storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n, rather than requiring that the host devices 378 a, 378 b, 378 c, 378 d, 378 n directly access the storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n.

The edge management service 366 of FIG. 3E exposes a storage services module 364 to the host devices 378 a, 378 b, 378 c, 378 d, 378 n of FIG. 3E, although in other embodiments the edge management service 366 may expose the storage services module 364 to other consumers of the various storage services. The various storage services may be presented to consumers via one or more user interfaces, via one or more APIs, or through some other mechanism provided by the storage services module 364. As such, the storage services module 364 depicted in FIG. 3E may be embodied as one or more modules of computer program instructions executing on physical hardware, on a virtualized execution environment, or combinations thereof, where executing such modules causes enables a consumer of storage services to be offered, select, and access the various storage services.

The edge management service 366 of FIG. 3E also includes a system management services module 368. The system management services module 368 of FIG. 3E includes one or more modules of computer program instructions that, when executed, perform various operations in coordination with the storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n to provide storage services to the host devices 378 a, 378 b, 378 c, 378 d, 378 n. The system management services module 368 may be configured, for example, to perform tasks such as provisioning storage resources from the storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n via one or more APIs exposed by the storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374n, migrating datasets or workloads amongst the storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n via one or more APIs exposed by the storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n, setting one or more tunable parameters (i.e., one or more configurable settings) on the storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n via one or more APIs exposed by the storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n, and so on. For example, many of the services described below relate to embodiments where the storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n are configured to operate in some way. In such examples, the system management services module 368 may be responsible for using APIs (or some other mechanism) provided by the storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n to configure the storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n to operate in the ways described below.

In addition to configuring the storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n, the edge management service 366 itself may be configured to perform various tasks required to provide the various storage services. Consider an example in which the storage service includes a service that, when selected and applied, causes personally identifiable information (‘PII’) contained in a dataset to be obfuscated when the dataset is accessed. In such an example, the storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n may be configured to obfuscate PH when servicing read requests directed to the dataset. Alternatively, the storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n may service reads by returning data that includes the PII, but the edge management service 366 itself may obfuscate the PII as the data is passed through the edge management service 366 on its way from the storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n to the host devices 378 a, 378 b, 378 c, 378 d, 378 n.

The storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n depicted in FIG. 3E may be embodied as one or more of the storage systems described above with reference to FIGS. 1A-3D, including variations thereof. In fact, the storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n may serve as a pool of storage resources where the individual components in that pool have different performance characteristics, different storage characteristics, and so on. For example, one of the storage systems 374 a may be a cloud-based storage system, another storage system 374 b may be a storage system that provides block storage, another storage system 374 c may be a storage system that provides file storage, another storage system 374 d may be a relatively high-performance storage system while another storage system 374 n may be a relatively low-performance storage system, and so on. In alternative embodiments, only a single storage system may be present,

The storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n depicted in FIG. 3E may also be organized into different failure domains so that the failure of one storage system 374 a should be totally unrelated to the failure of another storage system 374 b. For example, each of the storage systems may receive power from independent power systems, each of the storage systems may be coupled for data communications over independent data communications networks, and so on. Furthermore, the storage systems in a first failure domain may be accessed via a first gateway whereas storage systems in a second failure domain may be accessed via a second gateway. For example, the first gateway may be a first instance of the edge management service 366 and the second gateway may be a second instance of the edge management service 366, including embodiments where each instance is distinct, or each instance is part of a distributed edge management service 366.

As an illustrative example of available storage services, storage services may be presented to a user that are associated with different levels of data protection. For example, storage services may be presented to the user that, when selected and enforced, guarantee the user that data associated with that user will be protected such that various recovery point objectives (‘RPO’) can be guaranteed. A first available storage service may ensure, for example, that some dataset associated with the user will be protected such that any data that is more than 5 seconds old can be recovered in the event of a failure of the primary data store whereas a second available storage service may ensure that the dataset that is associated with the user will be protected such that any data that is more than 5 minutes old can be recovered in the event of a failure of the primary data store.

An additional example of storage services that may be presented to a user, selected by a user, and ultimately applied to a dataset associated with the user can include one or more data compliance services. Such data compliance services may be embodied, for example, as services that may be provided to consumers (i.e., a user) the data compliance services to ensure that the user's datasets are managed in a way to adhere to various regulatory requirements. For example, one or more data compliance services may be offered to a user to ensure that the user's datasets are managed in a way so as to adhere to the General Data Protection Regulation (‘GDPR’), one or data compliance services may be offered to a user to ensure that the user's datasets are managed in a way so as to adhere to the Sarbanes—Oxley Act of 2002 (‘SOX’), or one or more data compliance services may be offered to a user to ensure that the user's datasets are managed in a way so as to adhere to some other regulatory act. In addition, the one or more data compliance services may be offered to a user to ensure that the user's datasets are managed in a way so as to adhere to some non-governmental guidance (e.g., to adhere to best practices for auditing purposes), the one or more data compliance services may be offered to a user to ensure that the user's datasets are managed in a way so as to adhere to a particular clients or organizations requirements, and so on.

In order to provide this particular data compliance service, the data compliance service may be presented to a user (e.g., via a GUI) and selected by the user. In response to receiving the selection of the particular data compliance service, one or more storage services policies may be applied to a dataset associated with the user to carry out the particular data compliance service. For example, a storage services policy may be applied requiring that the dataset be encrypted prior to be stored in a storage system, prior to being stored in a cloud environment, or prior to being stored elsewhere. In order to enforce this policy, a requirement may be enforced not only requiring that the dataset be encrypted when stored, but a requirement may be put in place requiring that the dataset be encrypted prior to transmitting the dataset (e.g., sending the dataset to another party). In such an example, a storage services policy may also be put in place requiring that any encryption keys used to encrypt the dataset are not stored on the same system that stores the dataset itself. Readers will appreciate that many other forms of data compliance services may be offered and implemented in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure.

The storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n in the fleet of storage systems 376 may be managed collectively, for example, by one or more fleet management modules. The fleet management modules may be part of or separate from the system management services module 368 depicted in FIG. 3E. The fleet management modules may perform tasks such as monitoring the health of each storage system in the fleet, initiating updates or upgrades on one or more storage systems in the fleet, migrating workloads for loading balancing or other performance purposes, and many other tasks. As such, and for many other reasons, the storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n may be coupled to each other via one or more data communications links in order to exchange data between the storage systems 374 a, 374 b, 374 c, through 374 n.

The storage systems described herein may support various forms of data replication. For example, two or more of the storage systems may synchronously replicate a dataset between each other. In synchronous replication, distinct copies of a particular dataset may be maintained by multiple storage systems, but all accesses (e.g., a read) of the dataset should yield consistent results regardless of which storage system the access was directed to. For example, a read directed to any of the storage systems that are synchronously replicating the dataset should return identical results. As such, while updates to the version of the dataset need not occur at exactly the same time, precautions must be taken to ensure consistent accesses to the dataset. For example, if an update (e.g., a write) that is directed to the dataset is received by a first storage system, the update may only be acknowledged as being completed if all storage systems that are synchronously replicating the dataset have applied the update to their copies of the dataset. In such an example, synchronous replication may be carried out through the use of I/O forwarding (e.g., a write received at a first storage system is forwarded to a second storage system), communications between the storage systems (e.g., each storage system indicating that it has completed the update), or in other ways.

In other embodiments, a dataset may be replicated through the use of checkpoints. In checkpoint-based replication (also referred to as ‘nearly synchronous replication’), a set of updates to a dataset (e.g., one or more write operations directed to the dataset) may occur between different checkpoints, such that a dataset has been updated to a specific checkpoint only if all updates to the dataset prior to the specific checkpoint have been completed. Consider an example in which a first storage system stores a live copy of a dataset that is being accessed by users of the dataset. In this example, assume that the dataset is being replicated from the first storage system to a second storage system using checkpoint-based replication. For example, the first storage system may send a first checkpoint (at time t=0) to the second storage system, followed by a first set of updates to the dataset, followed by a second checkpoint (at time t=1), followed by a second set of updates to the dataset, followed by a third checkpoint (at time t=2). In such an example, if the second storage system has performed all updates in the first set of updates but has not yet performed all updates in the second set of updates, the copy of the dataset that is stored on the second storage system may be up-to-date until the second checkpoint. Alternatively, if the second storage system has performed all updates in both the first set of updates and the second set of updates, the copy of the dataset that is stored on the second storage system may be up-to-date until the third checkpoint. Readers will appreciate that various types of checkpoints may be used (e.g., metadata only checkpoints), checkpoints may be spread out based on a variety of factors (e.g., time, number of operations, an RPO setting), and so on.

In other embodiments, a dataset may be replicated through snapshot-based replication (also referred to as ‘asynchronous replication’). In snapshot-based replication, snapshots of a dataset may be sent from a replication source such as a first storage system to a replication target such as a second storage system. In such an embodiment, each snapshot may include the entire dataset or a subset of the dataset such as, for example, only the portions of the dataset that have changed since the last snapshot was sent from the replication source to the replication target. Readers will appreciate that snapshots may be sent on-demand, based on a policy that takes a variety of factors into consideration (e.g., time, number of operations, an RPO setting), or in some other way.

The storage systems described above may, either alone or in combination, by configured to serve as a continuous data protection store. A continuous data protection store is a feature of a storage system that records updates to a dataset in such a way that consistent images of prior contents of the dataset can be accessed with a low time granularity (often on the order of seconds, or even less), and stretching back for a reasonable period of time (often hours or days). These allow access to very recent consistent points in time for the dataset, and also allow access to access to points in time for a dataset that might have just preceded some event that, for example, caused parts of the dataset to be corrupted or otherwise lost, while retaining close to the maximum number of updates that preceded that event. Conceptually, they are like a sequence of snapshots of a dataset taken very frequently and kept for a long period of time, though continuous data protection stores are often implemented quite differently from snapshots. A storage system implementing a data continuous data protection store may further provide a means of accessing these points in time, accessing one or more of these points in time as snapshots or as cloned copies, or reverting the dataset back to one of those recorded points in time.

Over time, to reduce overhead, some points in the time held in a continuous data protection store can be merged with other nearby points in time, essentially deleting some of these points in time from the store. This can reduce the capacity needed to store updates. It may also be possible to convert a limited number of these points in time into longer duration snapshots. For example, such a store might keep a low granularity sequence of points in time stretching back a few hours from the present, with some points in time merged or deleted to reduce overhead for up to an additional day. Stretching back in the past further than that, some of these points in time could be converted to snapshots representing consistent point-in-time images from only every few hours.

Although some embodiments are described largely in the context of a storage system, readers of skill in the art will recognize that embodiments of the present disclosure may also take the form of a computer program product disposed upon computer readable storage media for use with any suitable processing system. Such computer readable storage media may be any storage medium for machine-readable information, including magnetic media, optical media, solid-state media, or other suitable media. Examples of such media include magnetic disks in hard drives or diskettes, compact disks for optical drives, magnetic tape, and others as will occur to those of skill in the art. Persons skilled in the art will immediately recognize that any computer system having suitable programming means will be capable of executing the steps described herein as embodied in a computer program product. Persons skilled in the art will recognize also that, although some of the embodiments described in this specification are oriented to software installed and executing on computer hardware, nevertheless, alternative embodiments implemented as firmware or as hardware are well within the scope of the present disclosure.

In some examples, a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-readable instructions may be provided in accordance with the principles described herein. The instructions, when executed by a processor of a computing device, may direct the processor and/or computing device to perform one or more operations, including one or more of the operations described herein. Such instructions may be stored and/or transmitted using any of a variety of known computer-readable media.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium as referred to herein may include any non-transitory storage medium that participates in providing data (e.g., instructions) that may be read and/or executed by a computing device (e.g., by a processor of a computing device). For example, a non-transitory computer-readable medium may include, but is not limited to, any combination of non-volatile storage media and/or volatile storage media. Exemplary non-volatile storage media include, but are not limited to, read-only memory, flash memory, a solid-state drive, a magnetic storage device (e.g., a hard disk, a floppy disk, magnetic tape, etc.), ferroelectric random-access memory (“RAM”), and an optical disc (e.g., a compact disc, a digital video disc, a Blu-ray disc, etc.). Exemplary volatile storage media include, but are not limited to, RAM (e.g., dynamic RAM).

One or more embodiments may be described herein with the aid of method steps illustrating the performance of specified functions and relationships thereof. The boundaries and sequence of these functional building blocks and method steps have been arbitrarily defined herein for convenience of description. Alternate boundaries and sequences can be defined so long as the specified functions and relationships are appropriately performed. Any such alternate boundaries or sequences are thus within the scope and spirit of the claims. Further, the boundaries of these functional building blocks have been arbitrarily defined for convenience of description. Alternate boundaries could be defined as long as the certain significant functions are appropriately performed. Similarly, flow diagram blocks may also have been arbitrarily defined herein to illustrate certain significant functionality.

To the extent used, the flow diagram block boundaries and sequence could have been defined otherwise and still perform the certain significant functionality. Such alternate definitions of both functional building blocks and flow diagram blocks and sequences are thus within the scope and spirit of the claims. One of average skill in the art will also recognize that the functional building blocks, and other illustrative blocks, modules and components herein, can be implemented as illustrated or by discrete components, application specific integrated circuits, processors executing appropriate software and the like or any combination thereof.

While particular combinations of various functions and features of the one or more embodiments are expressly described herein, other combinations of these features and functions are likewise possible. The present disclosure is not limited by the particular examples disclosed herein and expressly incorporates these other combinations.

In some embodiments, one or more storage systems or one or more elements of storage systems (e.g., features, services, operations, components, etc. of storage systems), such as any of the illustrative storage systems or storage system elements described herein, may be implemented in one or more container systems. A container system may include any system that supports execution of one or more containerized applications. A containerized application may include a software application and an entire runtime environment of the software application bundled into a single image. For example, the containerized application may include source code of the software application and various dependencies, libraries, and/or other components used by the software application to operate. As a result, the containerized application may be abstracted away from a host operating system as a lightweight and portable package, where the containerized application may be uniformly deployed and consistently executed on different computing environments that use different operating systems or different infrastructures. In some embodiments, a containerized application shares a kernel with a host computer system and executes as an isolated user space within an operating system of the host computer system. When executed, a containerized application may provide one or more containerized workloads and/or services.

The container system may include and/or utilize a cluster of nodes. For example, the container system may be configured to manage deployment and execution of containerized applications on one or more nodes in a cluster. The containerized applications may utilize resources of the nodes, such as processing and/or storage resources provided and/or accessed by the nodes. The storage resources may include any of the illustrative storage resources described herein and may include on-node resources (i.e., storage resources that are locally accessible at the node), off-node resources (i.e., storage resources that are not locally accessible at the node but, for example, may be locally accessible at other nodes), or both on-node and off-node resources.

In some embodiments, the container system may include a container orchestration system (which may also be referred to as a container orchestrator, a container orchestration platform, etc.) configured to automatically deploy, scale, and manage containerized applications. In some embodiments, the container system may include a storage management system configured to provision and manage storage resources (e.g., virtual volumes) for use by cluster nodes and/or containerized applications. The storage management system (also referred to as a container storage system) may be implemented, for instance, as a containerized application (e.g., a privileged containerized application that is endowed with privileges not afforded to other containerized applications so as to allow the container storage system to carry out storage-related tasks in kernel space of the node), as a non-containerized application executing on the node, or in any other suitable form.

In certain embodiments, a controller for containerized application deployment across clusters is provided. As described herein, as part of deploying a containerized application, a controller may select a cluster from among multiple clusters such as dozens or hundreds of clusters that may be geographically distributed (e.g., around the world, including across fault zones, geographic regions, countries, or municipalities). In some implementations, individual clusters may be provided by distinct cloud service providers,

The controller may be configured to deploy a containerized application to a given cluster based on the given cluster satisfying resource specifications for the containerized application and based on the given cluster satisfying one or more deployment policies. The controller may also redeploy a containerized application after a deployment based on a cluster on which the containerized application is currently deployed no longer satisfying one or more resource specifications or no longer satisfying at least one policy within one or more deployment policies. In some implementations, the controller may redeploy a containerized application even if the cluster on which the containerized application is currently deployed is satisfying all resource specifications and satisfying all deployment policies. For example, the controller may redeploy the containerized application based on an analysis (e.g., a cost analysis) of continuing to execute the containerized application on a current cluster in comparison to some other available cluster. Illustrative examples of resource specifications for the containerized application and deployment policies, as well as the use of the resource specifications and deployment polices by the controller to selectively deploy and/or redeploy the containerized application to a cluster selected from multiple clusters are described in detail herein.

FIGS. 4A and 4B illustrate an example container system 400. In some embodiments, a controller configured to selectively deploy containerized applications to available clusters may be implemented in the container system 400 (e.g., on one or more nodes of a cluster of the container system 400). In other embodiments, such a controller may be implemented external to the container system 400, or at least external to a cluster of the container system 400, and may be configured to selectively deploy containerized applications across clusters of the container system 400. In certain embodiments, the container system 400 may include a container storage system 402 configured to perform one or more operations to provide storage to one or more containerized applications 404-1 through 404-L of the container system 400, as described herein.

The container system 400 may include or be implemented by one or more container orchestration systems, including Kubernetes™, Mesos™, Docker Swarm™, among others. The container orchestration system may manage the container system 400 running on a cluster 408 through services implemented by a control node, depicted as 410.

A control plane of the container system 400 may implement services that include: deploying applications via a controller 412, monitoring applications via the controller 412, providing an interface via an API server 414, and scheduling deployments via scheduler 416. In some examples, controller 412, scheduler 416, API server 414, and container storage system 402 are implemented by a single node, node 410. In other examples, for resiliency, the control plane may be implemented by multiple, redundant nodes, where if a node that is providing management services for the container system 400 fails, then another, redundant node may provide management services for the cluster 408.

A data plane of the container system 400 may include a set of nodes that provides container runtimes for executing containerized applications. An individual node within the cluster 408 may execute a container runtime, such as Docker™, and execute a container manager, or node agent, such as a kubelet in Kubernetes (not depicted) that communicates with the control plane via a network proxy, such as an agent 418. The agent 418 may route network traffic to and from containers using, for example, Internet Protocol (IP) port numbers. For example, a containerized application may request a storage class from the control plane, where the request is handled by the container manager, and the container manager communicates the request to the control plane using the agent 418.

Cluster 408 may include a set of nodes that run containerized applications. A node may be a virtual or physical machine. A virtual machine is an emulation of a computer system, including a kernel, operating system, and namespace, where the emulated computer system may be managed by a virtual machine manager that executes on a host computer system. A virtual machine may be implemented by a compute instance within a cloud-based computing environment or by a physical machine. A process or application executing within a virtual machine does not communicate directly with a host computer system or host kernel, rather a process within a virtual machine communicates with the kernel and operating system of the emulated computer system, and kernel and operating system operations of the emulated computer system are handled by the virtual machine manager, which communicates with a host computer system. By contrast, a containerized application may share a kernel with a host computer system and may execute as an isolated user space within an operating system of a host system. A host system may be a node.

The container storage system 402 may orchestrate storage resources to provide storage to the container system 400. For example, the container storage system 402 may provide persistent storage to the containerized applications 404 using the storage pool 406. The container storage system 402 may be deployed as a containerized application by a container orchestration system. For example, the container storage system 402 application may be deployed within duster 408 and perform management functions for providing storage to the containerized applications 404. Management functions may include determining one or more storage pools from available storage resources, provisioning virtual volumes on one or more nodes, replicating data, and/or handling storage operations. The storage pool 406 may include storage resources from one or more local or remote sources, where the storage resources may be different types of storage.

The container storage system 402 may also be deployed on a set of nodes for which persistent storage may be provided by the container orchestration system. In some examples, the container storage system 402 may be deployed on all nodes in a cluster 408 using, for example, a DaemonSet. In this example, nodes 420-1 through 420-N provide a container runtime where container storage system 402 executes. In other examples, some, but not all nodes in a cluster may execute the container storage system 402.

The container storage system 402 may handle storage on a node and communicate with the control plane of container system 400, to provide dynamic volumes, including persistent volumes. A persistent volume may be mounted on a node as a virtual volume, such as virtual volumes 422-1 and 422-P. After a virtual volume 422 is mounted, containerized applications may request and use storage provided by the virtual volume 422. In some implementations, the container storage system 402 may install a driver on a kernel of a node, where the driver handles storage operations directed to the virtual volume. The driver may receive a storage operation directed to a virtual volume, and in response, the driver may perform the storage operation on one or more storage resources within the storage pool 406.

The container storage system 402 may, in response to being deployed, determine available storage resources. For example, storage resources 424-1 through 424-M may include local storage, remote storage, or both local and remote storage. The storage resources 424-1 through 424-M may include any type(s) and/or configuration(s) of storage resources (e.g., any of the illustrative storage resources described above), and the container storage system 402 may be configured to determine the available storage resources in any suitable way, including based on a configuration file. For example, a configuration file may specify account and authentication information for cloud-based object storage 348 or for a cloud-based storage system 318. The container storage system 402 may also determine availability of one or more storage devices 356 or one or more storage arrays 102. An aggregate amount of storage from one or more of storage device(s) 356, storage array(s) 102, cloud-based storage system(s) 318, edge management services 382, cloud-based object storage 348, or any other storage resources, or any combination or sub-combination of such storage resources may be used to provide the storage pool 406. The storage pool 406 is used to provision storage for the one or more virtual volumes 422 mounted on one or more of the nodes 420 within cluster 408.

In some implementations, the container storage system 402 may create multiple storage pools. For example, the container storage system 402 may aggregate storage resources of a same type into an individual storage pool. In this example, a storage type may be one of: a storage device 356, a storage array 102, a cloud-based storage system 318, storage via an edge management service 366, or a cloud-based object storage 348.

The container storage system 402 may execute within the cluster 408, where instances of the container storage system 402 may operate on different nodes within the cluster 408. In some examples, the container storage system 402 may operate with the container orchestration system of the container system 400 to handle storage operations, mount virtual volumes to provide storage to a node, aggregate available storage into a storage pool 406, provision storage for a virtual volume from a storage pool 406, generate backup data, among other storage system operations. In some examples, the container storage system 402 may provide storage services across multiple dusters operating in distinct computing environments. For example, other storage system operations may include storage system operations described above with respect to FIGS. 1-3 . Persistent storage provided by the container storage system 402 may be used to implement stateful and/or resilient containerized applications.

FIG. 4B illustrates an example configuration of the container system 400 in which the container storage system 402 may include modules 426 that provide control plane and data plane services for storage operations provided by the container storage system 402. The control plane module 426-1 and the data plane module 426-2 may communicate over the cluster 408 using various communication protocols, such as gRPC, HTTP, among others.

In some implementations, the control plane module 426-1 may handle one or more of: clustering, provisioning, or scheduling interactions with the container system 400. For example, various ones of the nodes 420 may be organized into clusters, where an individual cluster may share one or more storage pools. The control plane module 426-1 may store membership information of nodes, and configuration for one or more volumes of a storage pool, where the membership and configuration information may be stored in a database, such as a key-value database.

The control plane module 426-1 may receive metrics from each node to use to determine scheduling of storage operations. In some implementations, the metrics may include one or more of: node health information, I/O loads, CPU loads, memory loads, among others, The control plane module 426-1 may determine provisioning of storage and data placement within a storage pool based on one or more of: numbers of replicas specified by a configuration setting, storage pool categories or types, specified storage pools, or topology constraints.

The data plane module 426-2 may handle storage operations and communication with storage resources(s) 424, For example, the data plane module 426-2 may include an I/O queue, a write-through cache, a timestamp log of storage operations, an I/O dispatcher, device queues, and logic for replicating stored data.

In the configuration of the container system 400 shown in FIG. 4B, examples of storage resources 424 that may be included in the storage pool 406 are illustrated. For example, storage pool 406 may include one or more storage resources 424 (e.g., storage resources 424-1 through 424-M) that comprise the storage pool 406. The storage resources 424 may include one or more of local and/or remote storage devices such as storage device(s) 356, storage device(s) 256, storage array(s) 102, cloud-based object storage 348, and/or edge management service 366. Such storage devices may include one or more of: solid-state non-volatile memory, non-mechanical storage device(s) such as solid-state non-volatile memory, mechanical storage devices such as hard-disk drives, and/or any other devices that provide resources for data storage. The one or more storage arrays 102 may be implemented as described with reference to FIG. 1 . Cloud-based object storage 348 may be implemented as described with respect to FIGS. 3A-3C. An edge management service 366 may provide storage services as described with respect to FIG. 3E.

The duster 408 shown in FIGS. 4A-4B illustrates an example of a duster that may be included in a plurality of dusters. Other dusters in the plurality of dusters may be the same as, similar to, or different from the cluster 408. The plurality of dusters may include any grouping of dusters, which grouping may not include the illustrative duster 408 or may include any number of the illustrative duster 408. The clusters in the grouping may be geographically distributed in any manner, including across fault zones, geographic regions, countries, or municipalities.

FIG. 5A illustrates a controller 502 configured to selectively deploy containerized applications across a plurality of dusters, such as by selectively deploying a containerized application to one or more clusters among the plurality of clusters, in accordance with some embodiments.

The controller 502 may operate within any suitable computing environment that is connected over one or more computer networks to the plurality of dusters. The computing environment may be within one or more of the dusters included in the plurality of dusters or may be external to the plurality of dusters. In this example, the computing environment is a duster 504-1 provided by a cloud services provider 302-1. The controller 502 may be implemented as a containerized application, such as a containerized application instantiated and running on one or more nodes of the cluster 504-1. In other examples, the computing environment of the controller 502 may be a data center, one or more on-premises computing devices or servers, a mobile device, one or more other clusters in the plurality of clusters, among other computing environments. In such other computing environments, the controller 502 may be implemented as a containerized application, a traditional application, a distributed application, or in any other suitable way.

In certain implementations, the controller 502 may operate as part of a control plane that is at an abstraction layer independent from the respective individual control planes of the clusters onto which a containerized application may be deployed or redeployed. In some embodiments, individual control planes for an individual cluster among the multiple clusters may be implemented as the control planes described with respect to FIGS. 4A and 4B. The control planes described with respect to FIGS. 4A and 4B include a control plane for the container system 400 and a container storage system 402 control plane.

A given cluster among a plurality of clusters 504-2 through 504-M may be implemented similarly to cluster 408, described with respect to FIGS. 4A and 4B. In some implementations, a given cluster in the plurality of clusters 504-2 through 504-M may include a container storage system 402 or may not include a container storage system 402. The plurality of clusters 504-2 through 504-M may include clusters that are distributed across the world. As depicted in FIG. 5A, one or more clusters among the plurality of clusters 504-2 through 504-M may be in one or more geographic regions 508. A given cluster may be determined to be within one or more geographic regions based on the given cluster being implemented on at least some portion of physical hardware that is physically located within the one or more geographic regions.

The plurality of clusters 504-2 through 504-M may include a respective agent 506 operating on a respective cluster. The agent 506 may operate within a cluster 504 to determine telemetry data that describes one or more of: available resources on the cluster, status of one or more resources, utilization of one or more resources, among other telemetry data that may describe hardware or software characteristics of a duster 504. The agent 506 may provide telemetry data to the controller 502.

The agent 506 may provide telemetry data periodically, in response to a request from the controller 502, or in response to an event on a given cluster. An event on a cluster may include one or more of: a change in status of a resource on the cluster, a change in resource capacity, a change in resource utilization, a configuration change, among other types of changes to the resources of a cluster.

The computing environment for a given cluster 504 may be physically located within a given geographic region. The computing environments for the plurality of clusters may be in multiple regions 508 and on various continents. The clusters 504 may be provided by one or more cloud service providers, such as Amazon AWS™, Google Cloud Platform™, Microsoft Azure™, among others,

In some implementations, the controller 502 may select, from among a plurality of clusters such as the plurality of clusters 504-2 through 504-M a particular cluster on which to deploy a containerized application. The selection may be made based on cluster resources for the particular cluster satisfying one or more resource specifications for the containerized application. Accordingly, the containerized application may be deployed to and operate within the particular cluster and may have access to cluster resources that allow for operation that may satisfy a service level agreement, a user preference, or some other parameter. In addition, the selection may be made based on the particular cluster having cluster attributes that satisfy a deployment policy. Accordingly, the containerized application may be deployed to and operate within the particular cluster in compliance with specified regulations, data privacy, security, or other deployment policy specifications.

Cluster resources may include any resources of a cluster, such as storage resources, network resources, processing resources, performance capabilities, container runtime environments or platforms, container orchestrators, supported protocols, supported data formats, supported communication formats. Such resources may be defined or determined with respect to capacity (e.g., capacity of a resource), utilization (e.g., utilization of a resource), availability (e.g., availability of a resource), capability (e.g., capability of a resource), performance (e.g., performance of a resource), and/or in any other suitable way. In certain implementations, one or more cluster resources may be indicated by telemetry data received from the agent 506 of a duster. Telemetry data may indicate, for example, storage resources, storage capacity, network bandwidth, performance characteristics, compute loads, among other duster resources.

A resource specification for a containerized application may include data indicating one or more resource parameters for storage and/or operation of the containerized application when deployed and/or executing. For example, a resource specification for a containerized application may specify one or more storage resources, network resources, I/O operations per second (10PS), I/O latency threshold(s), data recovery time objectives (RTO), data recovery point objectives (RPO), a number of machines in a duster (including virtual or physical), a number of CPU cores, amounts and/or types of memory, a number of members in an etcd duster, workloads, processing resources, performance capabilities, container runtime environments or platforms, container orchestrators, protocols, data formats, communication formats, and/or any other resources required or desired for use by the containerized application. Such resources may be defined in the resource specification with respect to capacity (e.g., capacity of a resource), utilization (e.g., utilization of a resource), availability (e.g., availability of a resource), capability (e.g., capability of a resource), performance (e.g., performance of a resource), and/or in any other suitable way.

A resource specification for a containerized application may be determined by the controller 502 in any suitable way. In some implementations, a resource specification for a containerized application may be determined by the controller 502 based on one or more indications from a user interface, command line, or configuration file. In some implementations, a user interface may provide, for a resource specification, a list of options from which one or more selections may be made by a user to select one or more options to be included in the resource specification. For example, the user interface may provide selectable options for use by the user to select parameters to be included in the resource specification, such as a location requirement, a storage size requirement, a minimum IOPS requirement, and so on. With respect to a command line, one or more parameters may be parsed from a command line command, where each respective parameter may be included in a respective resource specification. With respect to a configuration file, the controller 502 may associate one or more fields or tokens within the configuration file with a resource specification. In certain implementations, a configuration file may be similar to a deployment for a containerized application within a container system 400, where the configuration file may comprise a respective field and a respective field value for a resource specification for the containerized application. In certain examples, a resource specification for a containerized application may specify parameters received via one or more of a user interface selection, a command line parameter, or configuration file.

A deployment policy for a containerized application may include data indicating one or more policies for deployment and/or operation of the containerized application on a cluster. The policies may be cluster-level policies specifying one or more cluster attributes that are required or desired of a cluster in order for the containerized application to be deployed to the cluster. For example, a deployment policy for a containerized application may specify a geographic region, one or more applicable governmental regulations, a latency value, financial costs, a security attribute, a privacy attribute, an energy consumption attribute (e.g., an energy level or certification), an operator attribute, and/or any other attributes that are required or desired in a cluster to which the containerized application may be deployed.

Cluster attributes may include any attributes of a cluster. The cluster attributes may be different from the cluster resources of the cluster described above, For example, cluster attributes may specify a geographic region of a cluster, one or more applicable governmental regulations associated with a cluster, one or more latency values associated with a geographic distance of the cluster relative to one or more other geographic locations (e.g., geographic locations for one or more users), financial costs associated with a cluster, a security attribute of the cluster, a privacy attribute of the cluster, an energy consumption attribute of the cluster (e.g., an energy level or certification of the duster), an operator attribute of the duster, among others.

In some implementations, a deployment policy for a containerized application may be specified similarly to a resource specification for the containerized application. For example, a deployment policy may be determined by the controller 502 based on one or more selections within a user interface, one or more parameter specifications of a command line, or one or more fields and associated field values specified by a configuration file. In certain examples, a deployment policy for a containerized application may specify parameters received via one or more of a user interface selection, a command line parameter, or a configuration file.

The controller 502 may be associated with a plurality of clusters that are to be considered by the controller 502 as candidates for deployment of containerized applications. The association may be made in any suitable way that allows the controller 502 to identify the plurality of clusters. In some implementations, the plurality of available clusters may be determined by the controller 502 using one or more of: one or more selections within a user interface, one or more parameter specifications of a command line, or one or more fields and associated field values specified by a configuration file. In this example, the plurality of available clusters is indicated by the plurality of clusters 504-2 through 504-M.

In some implementations, the controller 502 may detect a request to deploy a containerized application and determine an associated resource specification and an associated deployment policy for the containerized application. For example, the controller 502 may detect a request to deploy a containerized application based on a user interface interaction. In this example, the user interface may display a user interface element associated with a command to deploy a containerized application. As another example, the controller 502 may be invoked by a command line deployment command. The command line deployment command may indicate one or more parameters indicating one or more resource specification and one or more parameters indicating one or more deployment policies. An example of the controller 502 using a resource specification and a deployment policy to deploy a containerized application among a plurality of dusters 504-2 through 504-M is described in greater detail with respect to FIG. 5B.

FIG. 5B shows another illustration of the controller 502 that is configured to deploy a containerized application to one or more clusters among a plurality of clusters, in accordance with some embodiments.

In this example, the controller 502 is implemented within a computing environment 510. In some implementations, the computing environment 510 may be a cloud computing environment such as cloud computing environment 316, described with respect to FIGS. 3A-3E. Within the computing environment 510, the controller 502 may store and access one or more containerized application images 512, application resource data 514, telemetry data 516, deployment policy data 518, cluster attribute data 520, among other types of data usable to deploy or redeploy a containerized application.

A containerized application may include a software application and an entire runtime environment of the software application bundled into a given container image. The given container image may be one of the one or more containerized application image(s) 512. For example, a containerized application may include source code of the software application and various dependencies, libraries, or other components used by the containerized application to operate.

Application resource data 514 may indicate, for a given containerized application, application resources that the given containerized application uses to operate. For example, the application resource data 514. for a given containerized application, may specify a resource specification of the containerized application, as described above with respect to FIG. 5A. The application resource data 514 may specify resource parameters (e.g., usage parameters) for each containerized application or for a given type of containerized application.

Telemetry data 516 may indicate telemetry data for a plurality of clusters such as clusters 504-2 and 504-5 shown in FIG. 5B. The telemetry data 516 may be used by the controller 502 to determine whether resources of a duster satisfy a resource specification of a containerized application, where a resource specification may be indicated by application resource data 514. In certain examples, the telemetry data 516 may include indications of resource availability, resource usage, or resource status. For example, telemetry data 516 may include one or more indications for resource availability, resource usage, or resource status for one or more of the specifications described above with respect to a resource specification. The controller 502 may receive the telemetry data from agents 506 and store the telemetry data 516 in the computing environment 510.

In some implementations, the telemetry data 516 may be provided to the controller 502 by an agent 506 that is executing on a given cluster. For example, an agent 506-1 may determine telemetry data 516-1 associated with cluster 504-5 and transmit the telemetry data 516-1 to the controller 502. Further in this example, an agent 506-2 may determine telemetry data 516-2 associated with cluster 504-2 and transmit the telemetry data 516-2 to the controller 502. Telemetry data 516 may be determined by one or more monitoring tools that are executing within the container system 400. As one example among various container orchestration systems, Kubernetes provides information about application resource usage and metrics associated with a given containerized application, one or more pods, one or more services, among other characteristics of a cluster.

In the example of FIG. 5B, data 524-1 may include one or more of the telemetry data 516-1, the cluster attribute data 520-1, or other data associated with the cluster 504-5, a cloud services provider, or a region. Similarly, data 524-2 may include one or more of the telemetry data 516-2, the cluster attribute data 520-2, or other data associated with the cluster 504-2, a cloud services provider, or a region.

Deployment policy data 518 may indicate one or more deployment policies associated with a given containerized application. A deployment policy may specify one or more cluster attributes associated with the containerized application, such as a cluster attribute that is required or desired for deployment of the containerized application to a cluster. In certain examples, attributes of a cluster may be based on a region in which a cluster is physically located, based on a cloud services provider that provides the cluster, or on one or more other attributes that are not based on hardware or software specifications. In certain examples, a deployment policy for a given containerized application may be specified by a user. For example, the controller 502 may provide a user interface though which a user may specify one or more deployment policies associated with a given containerized application, or with a type or category of containerized application. The deployment policy data 518 may be received and stored by the controller 502.

Cluster attribute data 520 may indicate one or more attributes of clusters in a plurality of clusters. For example, cluster attribute data 520 may be specified as described above with respect to FIG. 5B. The controller 502 may receive and store the cluster attribute data 520. In certain examples, a government indicated by the cluster attribute data 520 may be representative of a municipal authority, state authority, national authority, or a treaty between parties that is associated with a geographic region. A financial parameter indicated by the cluster attribute data 520 may indicate one or more costs for one or more cluster resources, such as cluster resources described with respect to telemetry data 516. A data privacy regulation indicated by the cluster attribute data 520 may be a legal or other binding obligation that specifies storing or managing data that is transmitted through or is stored within a given geographic region. A security regulation indicated by the cluster attribute data 520 may be a legal or other binding obligation that specifies encrypting, a level of encryption, or authenticating data that is stored within or that is transmitted through a given geographic region.

The cluster attribute data 520 may be provided to the controller 502 in multiple ways. As a first example, the cluster attribute data 520 may be sent from an agent 506 to the controller 502, where the agent may access a database, configuration file, or other stored data file that includes the cluster attribute data 520. As a second example, the cluster attribute data 520 may be determined through a user interface provided by the controller 502. As a third example, the duster attribute data 520 may be provided by a cloud services provider 302.

To selectively deploy a containerized application 522, the controller 502 may select a duster from among a plurality of clusters 504-2 through 504-M. The plurality of dusters 504-2 through 504-M may be distributed across one or more geographic regions 508. The duster may be selected by the controller 502 based on the duster satisfying resource specifications for the containerized application 522 and based on the duster satisfying a deployment policy associated with the containerized application 522.

Deployment of the containerized application 522 may depend on a container system 400 implementation. For example, to deploy a containerized application in Kubernetes, a yaml the may be used to specify a desired state, replica information, container image location, port information, among other standard deployment specifications.

In the example illustrated in FIG. 5B, for simplicity, the plurality of dusters includes dusters 504-2 and 504-5 from which the controller 502 selects a duster to which to deploy the containerized application 522. In other examples, the plurality of dusters may include more dusters, as depicted within FIG. 5A. Cluster 504-5 is implemented within region 508-5, is provided by cloud services provider 302-5, and includes an agent 506-1 that communicates with the controller 502. Cluster 504-2 is implemented within region 508-2, is provided by cloud services provider 302-2, and includes an agent 506-2 that communicates with the controller 502.

As noted above, a duster on which to deploy a containerized application may be selected by the controller 502 based on the duster satisfying resource specifications for the containerized application 522 and based on the duster satisfying a deployment policy associated with the containerized application 522. To select a duster, the controller 502 may determine a first subset of clusters that satisfy resource specifications for the containerized application 522 and determine a second subset of dusters that satisfy a deployment policy associated with the containerized application 522. In this example, a given duster that is in the first subset of dusters and in the second subset of dusters may be a candidate duster for the controller 502 to deploy the containerized application.

Continuing this example, the controller 502 may determine the first subset of dusters based on the first subset of dusters having node resources that satisfy a resource specification of the containerized application 522. For example, the containerized application 522 may be associated with application resource data that indicates X TB of storage space, Y IPS, and Z CPU usage. Each of the clusters of the plurality of clusters 504-2 through 504-M that has more than or equal to X TB of storage space, provides more than or equal to Y IPS, and more than or equal to Z CPU usage may be determined to satisfy the resource specification for the containerized application 522. As described above, a containerized application may be associated with additional resource specifications. However, in this example, for simplicity, a small number of resource specifications are used, where additional resource specifications may be considered similarly to those used here.

The controller 502 may access and use application resource data 514 to determine which clusters among the plurality of clusters 504-2 through 504-M have resources that satisfy the resource specification(s) of the containerized application 522. Each of the clusters among the plurality of clusters 504-2 through 504-M that satisfy the resource specification(s) of the containerized application 522 may be determined to be the first subset of clusters.

Continuing this example, the controller 502 may determine the second subset of clusters based on the second subset of clusters having attribute data that satisfies a deployment policy of the containerized application 522. For example, the containerized application 522 may be associated with a deployment policy that indicates one or more geographic regions that are allowable, a maximum latency threshold associated with a geographic distance of a cluster relative to a user location, and a maximum financial cost. As described above, a containerized application may be associated with additional deployment policy attributes. However, in this example, for simplicity, a small number of deployment policy attributes are used, where additional deployment policy attributes may be considered similarly to those used here.

The controller 502 may access and use the deployment policy to determine which of the clusters of the plurality of clusters 504-2 through 504-M is in a region that is one of the one or more geographic regions specified by the deployment policy, which of the clusters of the plurality of clusters 504-2 through 504-M is associated with a communication latency that is less than or equal to the maximum latency threshold associated with a geographic distance of a cluster relative to a user location, and which of the clusters of the plurality of clusters 504-2 through 504-M is associated with costs that satisfy the maximum financial cost specified by the deployment policy for the containerized application 522. For each remaining cluster attribute, the controller 502 may continue to select clusters that satisfy each of the cluster attributes specified by the deployment policy. The clusters among the plurality of clusters 504-2 through 504-M that satisfy each of the deployment policy attributes specified by the deployment policy for the containerized application 522 may be determined to be the second subset of clusters.

In some examples, there may be shared clusters that are indicated by both the first subset of clusters and the second subset of clusters. To select a single cluster on which to deploy the containerized application, the controller 502 may prioritize the shared clusters based on one or more criteria. To illustrate, the controller 502 may rank each of the shared clusters according to one or more aspects of telemetry data. For example, the shared clusters may include a first candidate cluster and a second candidate cluster. The first candidate cluster may have higher performance, lower workloads, or higher storage availability and may rank higher than the second candidate cluster that may have relatively lower performance, higher workloads, or lower storage availability. The controller 502 may select the highest-ranking cluster for deployment of the containerized application 522.

In certain embodiments, the first subset and the second subset may be determined in any suitable order. As an example, the first subset may be determined before the second subset in some implementations. In other implementations, the second subset may be determined before the first subset. In implementations in which different subsets are determined in serial order, a subset of dusters that is determined first may be used as the plurality of dusters from which the next subset of dusters is determined. In other embodiments, the two subsets may be determined in parallel, or at least partly in parallel.

Given a selected duster, the controller 502 may deploy the containerized application 522 using established methods for deploying a containerized application within a container system. Examples of deploying a containerized application within a container system 400 are described above with respect to FIGS. 4A, 4B, and 5A.

After deployment of the containerized application 522 to the selected duster, the controller 502 may selectively redeploy the containerized application 522 to another cluster in some conditions. For example, the controller 502 may receive updated telemetry data from one or more of the plurality of clusters. If the cluster on which the containerized application 522 is currently deployed fails to satisfy either application resources associated with the containerized application 522 or a deployment policy attribute associated with the containerized application 522, the controller 502 may redeploy the containerized application 522 to another cluster. The other cluster on which to redeploy the containerized application 522 may be selected similarly to the selection of the cluster on which the containerized application 522 is currently operating.

In some implementations, the controller 502 may redeploy a containerized application based on projected cost savings for operating the containerized application. For example, the containerized application 522 may be operating on a first cluster, at a cost of X dollars per a first time period. In this example, the cost of operating the containerized application 522 on a second cluster that also satisfies resource specifications for the containerized application 522 and satisfies a deployment policy associated with the containerized application 522 may be Y dollars per the first time period. If the difference between X and Y is greater than a specified threshold amount over the first time period, then the controller 502 may redeploy the containerized application 522. A time period may be any time period, such as a week, a month, a quarter, a time period associated with a current version of the containerized application 522, among other time periods.

In some implementations, the telemetry data received from the agents 506 may be used to train a machine learning model, where the model may be used to predict changes in resources for a given cluster. During operation, the controller 502 may use the model to predict that a cluster may fail to satisfy a resource specification associated with a containerized application. In response, the controller 502 may generate a recommendation to redeploy the containerized application before the predicted change in resource availability on the given cluster occurs.

FIG. 6 depicts a flow diagram 600 illustrating an example method using a controller for containerized application deployment, in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

As described with respect to FIGS. 5A and 5B, a controller 502 may deploy or redeploy a containerized application to a cluster selected from a plurality of clusters that may be geographically distributed across one or more regions. The controller 502 may be used to deploy the containerized application to a given cluster based on the given cluster satisfying resource specifications for the containerized application and based on the given cluster satisfying one or more deployment policies.

The example method includes, at 602, determining a deployment policy 604-1 and a resource specification 604-2 associated with a containerized application. The deployment policy 604-1 may specify one or more attributes to be satisfied by a given cluster among a plurality of clusters. The resource specification 604-2 may specify resource parameters for storage and/or operation of the containerized application when deployed and executing. For example, a user may specify a containerized application to be deployed. The controller 502 may access one or more deployment policies 604-1 and one or more resource specifications 604-2 that are associated with the containerized application. If there are no deployment policies associated with the containerized application, the controller 502 may request from a user a specification of one or more cluster attributes for a deployment policy to be created for the containerized application.

The example method includes, at 606, determining, based on the plurality of dusters, a first subset of dusters 608 based on the first subset of dusters 608 having resources that satisfy a resource specification of the containerized application. Examples of determining a first subset of clusters based on the first subset of dusters having resources that satisfy a resource specification of the containerized application are described with respect to FIG. 5B.

The example method includes, at 610, determining, based on the plurality of clusters, a second subset of clusters 612 based on the second subset of clusters 612 having cluster attributes that satisfy a deployment policy. Examples of determining a second subset of clusters based on the second subset of clusters having cluster attributes that satisfy a deployment policy are described with respect to FIG. 5B.

The example method includes, at 614, selecting, based on the deployment policy 604-1, a first cluster 504-5 included in the first subset of clusters 608 and in the second subset of clusters 612. Examples of selecting the first cluster 504-5 based on the deployment policy 604-1 from among one or more clusters that are in both the first subset of clusters 608 and the second subset of clusters 612 are described with respect to FIG. 5B. In this example, the first cluster 504-5 is implemented by cloud services provider 302-5.

The example method includes, at 616, deploying the containerized application to the first cluster. Examples of deploying the containerized application to the first cluster are described with respect to FIG. 5B. In this example, the controller 502 may provide a containerized application image 618 and a configuration file for deploying the containerized application to cluster 504-5.

In some implementations, as an optimization, the controller 502 may select a cluster using fewer steps or operations, without determining multiple subsets of candidate clusters, for instance. For example, the controller 502 may use selection criteria that include specifications from a deployment policy and specifications from a resource specification associated with a containerized application to be deployed. Using the selection criteria, the controller 502 may determine, in a single pass through the plurality of dusters, a single subset of dusters that satisfies specifications in the deployment policy and that satisfies specifications in the resource specification. This subset may include one or more clusters that satisfy the specifications. If the subset includes only a single cluster, that cluster is selected by the controller 502 to host a deployment of the containerized application. If the subset includes multiple candidate clusters, the controller 502 may select, based on the deployment policy, a cluster from the subset based on a prioritization or ranking of the clusters.

FIG. 7 depicts a flow diagram 700 illustrating an example method using a controller for containerized application deployment, in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

As described with respect to FIGS. 5A and 5B, a controller 502 may deploy or redeploy a containerized application to a cluster selected from a plurality of clusters. The controller 502 may be used to deploy the containerized application to a given cluster based on the given cluster satisfying resource specifications for the containerized application and based on the given cluster satisfying one or more deployment policies.

In this example method, before the controller 502 redeploys an application from a first cluster to a second cluster based on the first cluster not providing resources specified by a resource specification for the application, the controller 502 attempts to request additional resources from the first cluster to satisfy a resource allocation of the application. The request for the resources is an attempt by the controller 502 to continue execution of the containerized application on the current cluster if the cluster can provide resources that satisfy the resource specification for the containerized application. This example method may continue from 616 described with respect to FIG. 6 .

The example method includes, at 702, determining, after deploying the containerized application, telemetry data associated with operation of the containerized application. For example, the controller 502 may receive telemetry data 516 as described with respect to FIGS. 5A and 5B. The telemetry data 516 may describe one or more of: status or operation of the containerized application, status or operation of the first duster, or status or operation of resources of the first duster.

The example method includes, at 704, determining, based on the telemetry data, that operation of the containerized application does not satisfy the resource specification of the containerized application. For example, similar to determining whether the first cluster satisfied the resource specifications for the containerized application to determine initial deployment of the containerized application to the first cluster, as described with respect to FIG. 5B, the controller 502 may determine whether the first cluster satisfies resource specifications for the containerized application at a time after deployment. In some examples, the controller 502 may delay redeployment for a period of time to allow for the first cluster to recover from any temporary resource constraints.

The example method includes, at 706, determining, based on the operation of the containerized application not satisfying the resource specification, a variance between resource availability indicated by the telemetry data and a resource allocation indicated by the resource specification, For example, a resource specification may indicate the resource allocation for the containerized application to be X TBs of storage. In this example, the first cluster may lose availability of a quantity of storage that reduces available storage to the containerized application from X TBs to less than X TBs, The variance may indicate a difference between a current resource availability of storage within the first cluster and the resource allocation indicated by the resource specification. For other resource allocations specified in the resource specification, the variance may similarly be used as a basis to determine a request from the controller 502 to provision resources that are sufficient to satisfy the resource specification for the containerized application.

The example method includes, at 708, requesting, from a control plane of the first cluster and based on the variance, one or more resources sufficient to satisfy the resource specification. In this example, based on the variance, the one or more resources requested may be a difference between the resource specification X TBs and the loss of storage available to the containerized application. In response to the request, the control plane of the container system 400 may attempt to provision additional storage, for example, block or object storage from a cloud services provider. In some implementations, if the controller 502 determines that the control plane of the container system 400 is unable to provision the requested additional storage, or unable to do so within a threshold interval of time, the controller 502 may determine to redeploy the containerized application from the first cluster to a second cluster. Redeployment of a containerized application is described above with respect to FIGS. 5A and 5B.

FIG. 8 depicts a flow diagram 800 illustrating an example method using a controller for containerized application deployment, in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

As described with respect to FIGS. 5A and 5B, a controller 502 may deploy or redeploy a containerized application to a cluster selected from a plurality of clusters. In this example, based on a first cluster failing to satisfy a resource specification for the containerized application, the controller 502 redeploys the application from a first cluster to a second cluster. This example method may continue from 616 described with respect to FIG. 6 .

The example method includes, at 802, determining, after deploying the containerized application, a change in a resource associated with a computing environment of the first cluster. For example, the controller 502 may receive telemetry data 516 as described with respect to FIGS. 5A and 5B. Telemetry data is described above with respect to FIGS. 5A and 58 . Based on the telemetry data, the controller 502 may identify the change in the resource associated with the computing environment of the first cluster.

The example method includes, at 804, determining that the change in the resource results in operation of the containerized application not satisfying the resource specification of the containerized application. For example, similar to determining whether the first cluster satisfied the resource specifications for the containerized application to determine initial deployment of the containerized application to the first cluster, as described with respect to FIG. 5B, the controller 502 may determine whether the first cluster satisfies resource specifications for the containerized application at a time after deployment.

The example method includes, at 806, redeploying, in response to the resource not satisfying the resource specification, the containerized application from the first cluster to a second duster among the plurality of dusters. The second duster on which to redeploy the containerized application may be selected similarly to the selection of the cluster on which the containerized application 522 is currently operating. Redeployment of the containerized application onto the second cluster may be performed similarly to deploying the containerized application to the first cluster.

FIG. 9 depicts a flow diagram 900 illustrating an example method using a controller for containerized application deployment, in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

As described with respect to FIGS. 5A and 5B, a controller 502 may deploy or redeploy a containerized application to a cluster selected from a plurality of clusters. In this example, based on redeploying the containerized application from the first cluster to the second cluster, the controller 502 also deploys any supporting applications used by the containerized application to the second cluster. This example method may continue from 806 described with respect to FIG. 8 .

The example method includes, at 902, determining a first one or more services provided by a first cloud computing environment, where the first cluster is provided by the first cloud computing environment, and where the first one or more services are used by the containerized application. For example, the controller 502 may have, in addition to a resource specification associated with a containerized application, a list of services or applications used by the containerized application. The first cloud computing environment may be provided by a first cloud services provider.

The example method includes, at 904, determining a second one or more services provided by a second cloud computing environment, where the second cluster is provided by the second cloud computing environment, and where the second one or more services provide similar services to services provided by the first one or more services. For example, if the first cluster and the second cluster are both provided by a same cloud services provider, then the services or applications used by the containerized application and available on the second duster may be identical as on the first cluster. Otherwise, if the first cluster and the second cluster do not have an identical set of support services or applications, the controller 502 may deploy services or applications that are similar to the services or applications used by the containerized application on the first cluster. For example, the controller 502 may have access to a configuration file that lists, for services by a first cloud services provider, similar services provided by one or more other cloud services providers.

The example method includes, at 906, in response to redeploying (806 of FIG. 8 ) the containerized application from the first cluster to the second cluster, initiating, the second one or more services on the second cluster. Further, a configuration file for deploying the containerized application may also specify communication endpoints for using the second one or more services.

In the examples described up to this point, controller 502 has been used to selectively deploy different containerized applications to different clusters of a plurality of clusters in a manner in which one containerized application is deployed to one particular cluster. As will now be described in more detail, various advantages may also be gained when controller 502 is configured to deploy containerized applications such that the applications use multi-cluster computing resources (i.e., computing resources that are from multiple clusters rather than all being from the same cluster).

Advantages and features of the present disclosure can be further described by the following statements:

1. A method comprising: receiving, by a controller associated with a plurality of clusters, a request to deploy a containerized application, the request associated with a resource specification indicating that, when deployed, the containerized application uses a first computing resource and a second computing resource; determining, by the controller and based on the request, an availability of the first computing resource on a first cluster of the plurality of clusters and of the second computing resource on a second cluster of the plurality of clusters, wherein the first and second clusters are different clusters; and deploying, by the controller based on the determining of the availability of the first and second computing resources. the containerized application such that the containerized application uses the first computing resource on the first duster and the second computing resource on the second duster,

2. The method of any of the preceding statements, wherein: the first duster includes a first plurality of nodes including a first node on which the first computing resource is available; the second cluster includes a second plurality of nodes including a second node on which the second computing resource is available; and the deploying of the containerized application includes: orchestrating, by a first container orchestration system associated with the first cluster, the first computing resource available on the first cluster to be used by the containerized application; and orchestrating, by a second container orchestration system associated with the second cluster, the second computing resource available on the second cluster to be used by the containerized application,

3. The method of any of the preceding statements, wherein the first cluster and the second cluster are each configured for general use and include substantially similar resource proportions for different types of computing resources including the first computing resource and the second computing resource.

4. The method of any of the preceding statements, further comprising determining, by the controller, an unavailability of the first computing resource on the second cluster and of the second computing resource on the first cluster; wherein the deploying of the containerized application is further based on the determining of the unavailability of the first and second computing resources.

5. The method of any of the preceding statements, wherein the first cluster and the second cluster are each configured for specialized use and include substantially dissimilar resource proportions for different types of computing resources including the first computing resource and the second computing resource.

6. The method of any of the preceding statements, wherein: the first cluster includes a substantially higher resource proportion of the first computing resource than is included in the second cluster; and the second cluster includes a substantially higher resource proportion of the second computing resource than is included in the first duster.

7. The method of any of the preceding statements, wherein both the first duster and the second duster are implemented within a same data center site.

8. The method of any of the preceding statements, wherein: the controller is implemented by an orchestration cluster configured to perform, on behalf of the plurality of dusters, orchestration services to satisfy requests to deploy containerized applications such that the containerized applications use available computing resources within any of the plurality of dusters; and the orchestration duster is implemented by the first cluster that includes the first computing resource used by the containerized application.

9. The method of any of the preceding statements, wherein the controller is implemented by an orchestration cluster configured to perform, on behalf of the plurality of clusters: orchestration services to satisfy requests to deploy containerized applications such that the containerized applications use available computing resources within any of the plurality of clusters, and user interfacing services to provide status updates to users after deployment of the containerized applications.

10. The method of any of the preceding statements, further comprising identifying, by the controller based on the resource specification, a first latency parameter associated with the first computing resource and a second latency parameter associated with the second computing resource, the first latency parameter more restrictive than the second latency parameter; wherein the deploying of the containerized application is further based on the second cluster being capable of satisfying the second latency parameter but not the first latency parameter.

11. The method of any of the preceding statements, further comprising redeploying, by the controller in response to a change to the resource specification, the containerized application such that the containerized application uses a third computing resource on a third cluster of the plurality of clusters.

12. The method of any of the preceding statements, further comprising: accessing, by the controller, cluster attribute data for each of the plurality of dusters, the duster attribute data indicative of computing resources implemented within each of the plurality of dusters; and accessing, by the controller from each of the plurality of dusters, telemetry data indicative of which of the computing resources implemented within each of the plurality of dusters is presently available for use; wherein the determining of the availability of the first and second computing resources is performed based on the duster attribute data and the telemetry data.

13. The method of any of the preceding statements, wherein the first and second computing resources are each selected from a list of computing resources including: central processing unit (CPU) resources, graphics processing unit (GPU) resources, memory resources, persistent storage resources, encrypted storage resources, network communication resources, and load balancing resources.

14. A controller system associated with a plurality of dusters, the controller system comprising: a memory storing instructions; and one or more processors communicatively coupled to the memory and configured to execute the instructions to perform a process comprising: receiving a request to deploy a containerized application, the request associated with a resource specification indicating that, when deployed, the containerized application uses a first computing resource and a second computing resource; determining, based on the request, an availability of the first computing resource on a first cluster of the plurality of clusters and of the second computing resource on a second cluster of the plurality of clusters, wherein the first and second clusters are different clusters; and deploying, based on the determining of the availability of the first and second computing resources, the containerized application such that the containerized application uses the first computing resource on the first cluster and the second computing resource on the second cluster.

15. The controller system of any of the preceding statements, wherein: the first cluster includes a first plurality of nodes including a first node on which the first computing resource is available; the second cluster includes a second plurality of nodes including a second node on which the second computing resource is available; and the deploying of the containerized application includes: orchestrating, by a first container orchestration system associated with the first cluster, the first computing resource available on the first cluster to be used by the containerized application; and orchestrating, by a second container orchestration system associated with the second cluster, the second computing resource available on the second cluster to be used by the containerized application.

16. The controller system of any of the preceding statements, wherein the first cluster and the second cluster are each configured for general use and include substantially similar resource proportions for different types of computing resources including the first computing resource and the second computing resource.

17. The controller system of any of the preceding statements, wherein the first cluster and the second cluster are each configured for specialized use and include substantially dissimilar resource proportions for different types of computing resources including the first computing resource and the second computing resource.

18. The controller system of any of the preceding statements, wherein: the process further comprises: identifying, based on the resource specification, a first latency parameter associated with the first computing resource and a second latency parameter associated with the second computing resource, the first latency parameter more restrictive than the second latency parameter; and determining that the second cluster is capable of satisfying the second latency parameter but not the first latency parameter; wherein the deploying of the containerized application is further based on the determining that the second cluster is capable of satisfying the second latency parameter but not the first latency parameter.

19. The controller system of any of the preceding statements, wherein the process further comprises: determining, subsequent to the deploying of the containerized application, that the resource specification is changed; and redeploying, based on the determining that the resource specification is changed, the containerized application such that the containerized application uses at least one of the first or second computing resources on the first or second dusters and further uses a third computing resource on a third duster of the plurality of dusters, the third duster different from the first and second clusters.

20. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions that, when executed, direct a processor of a controller system associated within a plurality of clusters to perform a process comprising: receiving a request to deploy a containerized application, the request associated with a resource specification indicating that, when deployed, the containerized application uses a first computing resource and a second computing resource; determining, based on the request, an availability of the first computing resource on a first cluster of the plurality of clusters and of the second computing resource on a second cluster of the plurality of clusters, wherein the first and second clusters are different clusters; and deploying, based on the determining of the availability of the first and second computing resources, the containerized application such that the containerized application uses the first computing resource on the first cluster and the second computing resource on the second cluster.

As will now be described in more detail, certain implementations of controller 502 may be configured to deploy a containerized application such that the application uses multi-cluster computing resources (e.g., computing resources that are part of different clusters). For example, as will be described, a containerized application may be configured, when deployed, to use different computing resources (e.g., CPU resources, GPU resources, memory resources, load balancing resources, etc.). Accordingly, the controller 502 may deploy such containerized applications to use multi-cluster compute resources. For instance, the controller 502 may deploy a containerized application such that the containerized application uses available computing resources from different clusters as such resources may be determined to be available. In one example, the controller 502 may receive a request to perform a job (e.g., to deploy a containerized application, etc.) and may proceed to satisfy the request by unpacking the job to identify different computing resources that will be needed to properly handle the job, determining which of a plurality of clusters have the capability and availability of the needed computing resources, and deploying the containerized application to use different computing resources from different dusters (e.g., possibly providing certain computing resources for the job locally from the duster on which the controller 502 is implemented).

When the controller 502 arranges for deployment of a containerized application that is to use a computing resource from a particular cluster (e.g., the cluster 408 described above), a respective controller, scheduler, and/or other component of an orchestration system associated with the cluster (e.g., the controller 412 and scheduler 416 of the cluster 408, etc.) may then be employed to assign resources of an available node (e.g., one of nodes 420, etc.) to assist in the execution of the containerized application. Consequently, controller 502 may serve, in a sense, as a meta-controller (e.g., a controller for a plurality of controllers, a scheduler for a plurality of schedulers, an orchestrator for a plurality of orchestrators, etc.). As will be described in more detail below, in certain examples, such meta-control may allow general-purpose clusters to be used more efficiently by allowing modular use of their computing resources by containerized applications that are deployed so as to combine resources from different clusters and nodes that are deemed most appropriate and efficient at a given moment based on various criteria. As such, a cluster with some available resources may be targeted for certain aspects of the application deployment even if the cluster does not have the capability and/or available computing resources to handle all aspects of the application deployment (i.e., the entire containerized application). In other examples, such meta-control may allow for greater specialization and effective use of computing resources such as by allowing clusters to perform certain specialties more effectively and/or efficiently than might otherwise be the case for more general-purpose designs,

In some cases, these types of benefits may be achieved without significant costs or inconvenience to an entity supplying the job (e.g., a user making the request to deploy a particular containerized application), Just as users may rely on the node 410 and its respective components (e.g,, controller 412, scheduler 416, etc.) to manage the deployment of a job sent to the cluster 408 on various nodes 420, a user may similarly rely on implementations of the controller 502 that will now be described to manage various details of the deployment of a job so as to use multi-duster computing resources (e.g., computing resources from different dusters within a single data center or even from dusters distributed to different geographies around the globe). For example, an orchestration cluster containing this implementation of the controller 502 may be configured to represent to the user that the containerized application is being handled entirely by local computing resources of the orchestration cluster itself while, behind the scenes, the orchestration cluster may actually deploy the containerized application such that computing resources are used from a plurality of clusters (e.g., computing resources that have the capability and current availability to adequately perform the task and/or that meet other relevant criteria determined based on various policies, etc.). In this way, the deployment of a containerized application may be made simpler and more convenient from a user perspective as the user may only need to communicate with the controller 502 of the proxy cluster, while details of deployment aspects that involve other clusters are abstracted away from the user such that they need not be a matter of concern for the user.

FIG. 10A depicts a flow diagram 1000 illustrating an example method using the controller 502 for containerized application deployment to use multi-cluster computing resources in accordance with principles described herein. As shown, the method of flow diagram 1000 may be performed, in full or in part, by the controller 502 illustrated and described above in relation to FIGS. 5A-5B. Similarly, it will be understood that the method may be performed by another suitable controller or orchestration system that is implemented within one duster and associated with a plurality of additional clusters. While the method shows illustrative operations according to one implementation, other implementations may omit, add to, reorder, and/or modify any of the operations shown in flow diagram 1000. In some examples, multiple operations shown in the method may be performed concurrently (e.g., in parallel) with one another, rather than being performed sequentially as illustrated and/or described. Each of operations 1002-1006 of the method of flow diagram 1000 will now be described.

At operation 1002, the controller 502 may receive a request to deploy a containerized application. For example, the request may be similar or identical to a request that might be received by a controller that is configured to orchestrate work for one particular cluster (e.g., the controller 412 of the cluster 408 described above). While the containerized application identified in the request could theoretically be deployed to use computing resources of one or more nodes of a single cluster (e.g., the cluster 408 or the cluster implementing the controller 502), the containerized application, in this example, may also be configured to operate using computing resources that are distributed to different nodes within a plurality of different clusters. As such, the request received at operation 1002 may be associated with a resource specification that indicates computing resources that are to be used by the containerized application when deployed. For example, the request may include data representative of a resource specification, or at least data representative of a pointer, link, and/or other suitable reference to facilitate the controller 502 in gaining access to data representative of such a resource specification.

The resource specification may indicate that, when deployed, the containerized application uses a first computing resource and a second computing resource. For example, these computing resources may include any suitable types of computing resources (e.g., any of the types of computing resources described herein) in any designated quantities as may serve a particular implementation. For instance, the first computing resource may be identified as a certain number of processing cores (e.g., CPU or GPU cores) or a certain amount of processing capability, while the second computing resource may be identified as a certain amount of memory (e.g,, memory meeting certain latency or other performance criteria, etc,). Other examples of computing resources have been described and will be set forth in more detail below, including, without limitation, persistent storage resources, encrypted storage resources, communication resources, load balancing resources, and so forth. Examples of resource specifications such as may be associated with the request received at operation 1002 have been described above (e.g., resource specification 604-2, etc.) and will be described in more detail below.

At operation 1004, the controller 502 may determine the availability of the relevant computing resources on different dusters of a plurality of dusters with which the controller 502 is associated. For example, based on (e.g., in response to) the request received at operation 1002, the controller 502 may determine an availability of the first computing resource on a first duster of the plurality of clusters, and may determine an availability of the second computing resource on a second cluster of the plurality of clusters. The first and second clusters in this example will be understood to refer to different clusters within the plurality of clusters. For instance, if the controller 502 is implemented within cluster 504-1 (such as shown in FIG. 5A), the first cluster (on which the availability of the first computing resource is determined) could refer to cluster 504-1, where the controller 502 is implemented, while the second cluster (on which the availability of the second computing resource is determined) could refer to one of the other clusters 504, such as cluster 504-2. As another example in which the controller 502 is still implemented within cluster 504-1, the first cluster could refer to cluster 504-2 and the second cluster could refer to cluster 504-3. The availability of the first and second clusters may be determined at operation 1006 based on any suitable data accessible to the controller 502, including telemetry data from the plurality of clusters or other data described herein.

At operation 1006, the controller 502 may deploy the containerized application. For example, based on the determining of the availability of the first and second computing resources at operation 1004, the controller 502 may deploy the containerized application such that it uses the first computing resource on the first cluster and the second computing resources on the second cluster. Additionally, as described in examples above and as will be described in more detail below, the deploying of operation 1006 may be further based on other operations that have been performed and/or based on other data accessible to the controller 502 (e.g., the resource specification, a deployment policy, telemetry data, etc.).

While flow diagram 1000 shows certain operations that may be included within many implementations, it will be understood that additional operations may also be performed prior to, subsequent to, in parallel with, instead of, or otherwise in connection with any of the operations of flow diagram 1000. Additionally, once the containerized application is deployed to use the different computing resources from the different dusters, it will be understood that various embodiments may include operations performed (e.g., by the controller 502 and/or by other entities such as local controllers of the clusters hosting the computing resources to which the containerized application has been deployed) to manage the containerized application as it is executed and used. To illustrate, examples of various additional operations that may be performed alongside operations 1002-1006 will now be described in relation to FIG. 10B.

FIG. 10B depicts a flow diagram 1010 illustrating another example method using the controller 502 for containerized application deployment to use multi-cluster computing resources in accordance with principles described herein. As with the method of flow diagram 1000, the method of flow diagram 1010 is shown to be performed, in full or in part, by the controller 502. Again, however, it will be understood that the method may be performed by another suitable controller or orchestration system that is implemented within one cluster and associated with a plurality of additional clusters. The operations 1002-1006 of flow diagram 1000 are shown in dashed lines in flow diagram 1010 alongside various additional operations not yet described. However, as with the method of FIG. 10A, the method of FIG. 10B will be understood to include illustrative operations according to one implementation while other implementations may omit, add to, reorder, and/or modify any of the operations shown in flow diagram 1010. In some examples, multiple operations shown in the method may be performed concurrently (e.g., in parallel) with one another, rather than being performed sequentially as illustrated and/or described. Each of operations 1012-1020 of the method of flow diagram 1010 will now be described.

At operation 1012, the controller 502 may access cluster attribute data for each of the plurality of clusters. For example, the cluster attribute data may be indicative of computing resources implemented within each of the plurality of clusters to which the controller 502 is associated (e.g., the clusters being considered for use in the deployment of the containerized application). Such duster attribute data has been described above (e.g., cluster attribute data 520) and may be accessed from the various clusters themselves or from another suitable source (e.g., a database that is accessible to the controller 502 and that stores the cluster attribute data and is updated when new clusters are added, clusters are removed or modified, etc.).

At operation 1014, the controller 502 may access telemetry data for each of the plurality of clusters. For example, the telemetry data may be indicative of which of the computing resources implemented within each of the plurality of clusters is presently available for use. Such telemetry data has been described above (e.g., telemetry data 516) and may be accessed from each of the plurality of clusters or from another suitable source (e.g., an aggregator service that tracks telemetry data of the clusters in real time, etc.).

As shown in the method of flow diagram 1010, operations 1012 and 1014 may each be performed responsive to the receiving of the request at operation 1002 (e.g., prior to operation 1004). Accordingly, the determining of the availability of the first and second computing resources at operation 1004 may be performed based on either or both of the cluster attribute data accessed at operation 1012 and the telemetry data accessed at operation 1014.

Once the availability is determined at operation 1004, the deploying of the containerized application at operation 1006 may be performed straightaway or based on additional functions and/or data represented, for example, by operations 1016 and 1018. Operation 1016 is shown to follow operation 1004. which then leads to operation 1006. Operation 1018 (which may be implemented together with or instead of operation 1016), is shown to follow operation 1004 and to lead to operation 1006 as another basis on which operation 1006 may be performed.

At operation 1016, the controller 502 may identify a first latency parameter associated with the first computing resource and a second latency parameter associated with the second computing resource. For example, the latency parameters may be identified based on the resource specification for the containerized application and may indicate, for instance, a required or desirable latency target that is to be met (or at least targeted) for whatever computing resources are used when the containerized application is deployed. For purposes of this example, it will be assumed that the first latency parameter is more restrictive than the second latency parameter. That is, the first latency parameter may indicate that there is less time margin for functionality relying on the first computing resource than there is for functionality relying on the second computing resource. Based on these latency parameters, the controller 502 may determine that the second cluster (i.e., the cluster with the less restrictive latency parameter) is capable of satisfying the second (less restrictive) latency parameter but not the first (more restrictive) latency parameter. For example, the controller 502 may determine that there is, within the second cluster, an availability of an instance of the second computing resource that is capable of satisfying the second latency parameter, despite that there is not, within the second cluster, an availability of an instance of the first computing resource that is capable of satisfying the first latency parameter. As a consequence of this determination, the controller 502 may determine that the deploying of the containerized application at operation 1006 may not be suitably performed by deploying the entire containerized application to computing resources of the second cluster, since the second cluster is not capable of satisfying the first latency parameter, Accordingly, the deploying of the containerized application at operation 1006 may be further based on the second cluster being capable of satisfying the second latency parameter but not the first latency parameter and, as described above in relation to operation 1006, the deploying of the containerized application may involve deploying the containerized application to use the different computing resources on the different (first and second) clusters.

As an additional or alternative basis for the deploying of operation 1006, at operation 1018, the controller 502 may determine an unavailability of the first computing resource on the second cluster and/or an unavailability of the second computing resource on the first cluster. For example, if the first computing resource is a certain amount of processing resources and the second computing resource is a certain amount of persistent storage resources, operation 1018 may involve determining that only the first cluster (and not the second cluster) has the requisite processing resources available, while only the second cluster (and not the first cluster) has the requisite amount of persistent storage available. Accordingly, the deploying of the containerized application at operation 1006 may be further based on the determination(s) of operation 1018 of the unavailability of the first and/or second computing resources (along with being based on the determination at operation 1004 of the availability of these computing resources on the other clusters).

Subsequent to an initial deployment of the containerized application at operation 1006, circumstances may change such that the controller 502 may perform additional operations to change the arrangements orchestrated at the initial deployment. Such changes may be performed in similar ways to redeployments of containerized applications described above.

For example, it may be the case that, subsequent to the deploying of the containerized application at operation 1006, the resource specification is changed. For example, due to more usage of the containerized application (e.g., more users signing into their respective accounts to use the containerized application, users engaging in activities that are more computationally intensive or demanding, etc.) the resource specification may be altered to indicate that more computing resources (e.g., more processing resources, memory resources, storage resources, etc.) may be called for to adequately implement the containerized application. Accordingly, at operation 1020, the controller 502 may redeploy the containerized application such that it uses a third computing resources on a third cluster of the plurality of clusters (i.e., a different cluster from either the first or second clusters). Of course, at least one of the first or second computing resources (on the first or second clusters) may also be used after the redeployment. This redeployment may be performed in response to the change to the resource specification.

In some examples, the redeployment at operation 1020 may involve ceasing use of the computing resources previously orchestrated from the first or second clusters as the third computing resource on the third cluster is put into use instead, In other examples, the redeploying of operation 1020 may not necessarily involve ceasing use of the previously-orchestrated computing resources (from the first and/or second clusters) but, rather, may just involve commencing use of the third computing resource on the third cluster. If persistent storage resources have been allocated as part of the initial deployment of the containerized application, redeployment at operation 1024 may involve migrating stored data from the previously orchestrated cluster(s) to the third cluster so that there will be no interruption to desired operation of the application and no data being used by the application will be lost.

FIG. 11 illustrates an example configuration 1100 in which the controller 502 is implemented in an orchestration cluster (designated as the cluster 504-1 described above for this example) to implement containerized application deployment to use multi-cluster computing resources in accordance with principles described herein. More particularly, as will now be described, the controller 502 may be implemented, in this example, by an orchestration cluster configured to perform, on behalf of the plurality of clusters (e.g., other clusters 504-2 through 504-M, for this example), both 1) orchestration services to satisfy requests to deploy containerized applications such that the containerized applications use available computing resources within any of the plurality of clusters, and 2) user interfacing services to provide status updates to users after deployment of the containerized applications.

As shown, a black box 1102 represents the various computing resources of the plurality of clusters 504, including computing resources of cluster 504-1 and computing resources of the other clusters 504-2 through 504-M. The computing resources of black box 1102 are shown to be accessible to (e.g., communicatively coupled with) the orchestration cluster 504-1 and the controller 502 implemented therein. The orchestration cluster 504-1 and controller 502 are also shown to be communicatively coupled to a user device 1104 used by a user 1106. For this illustrative configuration, user device 1104 may represent one or more computers by way of which a containerized application is developed and maintained, while user 1106 may represent one or more people responsible for developing, deploying, and maintaining the containerized application within the cloud compute environment implemented by the various clusters 504.

User device 1104 is shown to communicate by way of a network 1108 (e.g., the Internet and/or any other suitable networks employing any suitable communication technologies) with user interfacing services 1110 of the controller 502. Meanwhile, the computing resources of the plurality of dusters 504 represented by black box 1102 are shown to be accessed and controlled by orchestration services 1112 of the controller 502. In this way, user device 1104 may provide a request 1114 to deploy a containerized application to a “master” or “proxy” cluster (e.g., orchestration cluster 504-1) and that cluster may serve as a single point of contact for receiving back status updates 1116 and/or other information (e.g., security alerts, operational statistics, etc.) even if the controller 502 deploys the containerized application in a manner that the containerized application uses computing resources from clusters 504 other than cluster 504-1.

Orchestration cluster 504-1 and controller 502 may be configured to provide both the user interfacing services 1110 and the orchestration services 1112 in a way that allows various deployment details to be abstracted such that, from the perspective of user device 1104 (and user 1106), it appears as if deployment of the containerized application is limited to the computing resources of one cluster (i.e., orchestration cluster 504-1). The methods and systems for containerized application deployment to use multi-cluster computing resources described herein may therefore be convenient, intuitive, and low-impact for users to learn, adopt, and use, since the architecture is configured to resemble a conventional cloud compute architecture from the user perspective.

FIGS. 12A and 12B show illustrative aspects of a plurality of clusters hosting different computing resources that may be used by a containerized application when deployed in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure. More particularly, FIG. 12A shows a view 1200-A depicting certain details of orchestration cluster 504-1 and additional clusters 504-2 through 504-M that may be in communication with orchestration cluster 504-1 by way of the network 1108. FIG. 12A shows that each cluster 504 may include a respective container orchestration system 1202 (e,g., container orchestration system 1202-1 for orchestration cluster 504-1, container orchestration system 1202-2 for cluster 504-2, etc,), as well as respective pluralities of nodes 420 that will be understood to contain the various computing resources of the duster to which containerized application may be deployed. FIG. 12A also shows the request 1114 being received by orchestration cluster 504-1 (e.g., by way of network 1108) and indicates that the computer resources represented by black box 1102 are contained within the nodes of the various clusters 504.

Based on FIG. 12A, FIG. 12B breaks out still more details of this configuration in a view 1200-B. View 1200-B includes the same elements of view 1200-A (albeit some of those elements are occluded due to space constraints), but further depicts additional elements such as a cluster orchestration system 1204 implemented by the controller 502, different types of data (e.g., telemetry data 516 and cluster attribute data 520) that is used by the cluster orchestration system 1204 of the controller 502, a resource specification 1206 for the containerized application that is associated with (e.g., provided or linked to as part of) the request 1114, various computing resources 1208 (including at least a first computing resource 1208-1 and a second computing resource 1208-2) set forth in the resource specification 1206, and a few examples of the computing resources contained within various nodes 420 of the different clusters 504.

Each of the elements of FIGS, 12A and 12B will now be described in more detail.

The clusters 504-1 through 504-M, as described and illustrated above in relation to FIGS. 5A-5B, may represent clusters of nodes located in the same or different data centers, in the same or different geographies (e.g., parts of the world), operated by the same or different cloud compute providers, and so forth. Any suitable network or combination of networks (represented as the network 1108 in FIGS. 12A-12B) may therefore be used to interconnect an orchestration cluster 504-1 with other clusters 504 that may be implemented within the same data center as the orchestration cluster 504-1 (e.g., in the case, described in more detail below, where a data center contains several clusters configured with different computing specialties) or within a different data center located at a different part of the country or the world,

A plurality of nodes 420 are shown to be located in each of the clusters 504. As has been mentioned, the computing resources that are to be used to execute a containerized application when deployed may be included within the various nodes 420 of the dusters 504. To illustrate, FIG. 12B labels one of nodes 420 (of orchestration duster 504-1) as an illustrative node 420-1 and breaks it out to show certain computing resources included within the node (“Computing Resource 1” through “Computing Resource 4” and other resources represented by an ellipsis). FIG. 12B also breaks out an illustrative node 420-2 (from orchestration cluster 504-2) and shows that it too includes certain computing resources (the same “Computing Resource 1” through “Computing Resource 4” in this example, though it will be understood that different computing resources may be included in other nodes for other examples).

It will be understood that the computing resources of the various nodes 420 (e.g., Computing Resources 1-4, etc.) may represent different amounts of computing resources of different types as may be implemented in a given node. For example, nodes 420 may include resources such as central processing unit (CPU) resources, graphics processing unit (GPU) resources, memory resources, persistent storage resources, encrypted storage resources, network communication resources, load balancing resources, and/or any other suitable computing resources as may serve a particular implementation. In some examples (as shown in FIG. 12B), nodes 420 will be understood to include the same types of resources (in the same or differing amounts) as other nodes 420. In other examples (as mentioned above), nodes 420 may include different types of resources when compared to other nodes.

As has been described, the controller 502 may be configured to determine (e,g., based on telemetry data 516, cluster attribute data 520, and/or other such data, circumstances, or factors) whether the needed computing resources 1208 set forth in resource specification 1206 are available for use in a deployment of a containerized application. Accordingly, in the depiction of the various computing resources of nodes 420-1 and 420-2 in FIG. 12B, a notation is used in which computing resources that are determined to be available are drawn with bold, solid lines (see, for example, “Computing Resource 1” of node 420-1, “Computing Resource 2” of node 420-2, etc.), while computing resources that are determined to be unavailable are drawn with dotted lines (see, for example, “Computing Resource 2” of node 420-1, “Computing Resource 1” of node 420-2, etc.).

Respective container orchestration systems 1202 are shown to be included within each cluster 504, including the orchestration cluster 504-1. Container orchestration systems 1202 may be implemented by Kubernetes or other container orchestration systems described herein, and may be responsible for assigning, scheduling, managing, deploying, redeploying, and/or otherwise orchestrating containerized applications to be fully or partially executed by the computing resources of their respective clusters. As one example, a container orchestration system 1202 may be implemented by elements of node 410 in the example of cluster 408 above (e.g., the controller 412, the scheduler 416, etc.). As has been described, a typical use case for a container orchestration system may include a request being sent to the container orchestration system to deploy a containerized application to the particular cluster of the container orchestration system. In response to the request, the container orchestration system may be configured to determine availability of computing resources on the nodes within the cluster and to orchestrate the use, by the containerized application being deployed, of available computing resources within the nodes. For example, container orchestration system 1202-1 may orchestrate the use of its Computing Resource 1 for a particular containerized application associated with request 1114, while container orchestration system 1202-2 may orchestrate the use of its Computing Resource 2 for this same particular containerized application.

Cluster orchestration system 1204 is analogous to the container orchestration systems 1202, but is configured to communicate with the container orchestration systems 1202 of the various clusters 504 rather than communicating with the various nodes 420 within a particular cluster. Hence, as has been mentioned, the controller 502 (and, more specifically, the cluster orchestration system 1204 implemented therein) may serve as a cluster orchestration system for the lower-level container orchestration systems 1202. For instance, in the example illustrated by FIG. 12B, a first cluster (e.g., the orchestration cluster 504-1 in this example) is shown to include a first plurality of nodes 420 including a first node 420-1 on which the first computing resource 1208-1 is available (e.g., “Computing Resource 1” in this example). Additionally, a second duster (e.g., duster 504-2 in this example) is shown to include a second plurality of nodes 420 including a second node 420-2 on which the second computing resource 1208-2 is available (e.g., “Computing Resource 2” in this example). Accordingly, the duster orchestration system 1204 may deploy the containerized application such that the containerized application uses Computing Resource 1 on the first cluster (i.e., orchestration cluster 504-1) for the first computing resource 1208-1 set forth in the resource specification 1206, and such that the containerized application uses Computing Resource 2 on the second cluster (i.e., cluster 504-2) for the second computing resource 1208-2 set forth in the resource specification 1206. To achieve this end, cluster orchestration system 1204 may employ container orchestration systems 1202-1 and/or 1202-2 to help orchestrate and otherwise direct the usage of their respective Computing Resources 1 and 2.

As shown in FIGS. 12A and 12B, the controller 502 is implemented by the orchestration cluster 504-1 that is configured to perform, on behalf of the plurality of clusters 504, the orchestration services 1112 (e.g., the functions of cluster orchestration system 1204, etc.) to satisfy requests (e.g., request 1114) to deploy containerized applications such that the containerized applications use available computing resources within any of the plurality of clusters 504. In this example, this same orchestration cluster 504-1 also happens to be implemented by the first cluster that includes the first computing resource 1208-1 used by the containerized application. It may be advantageous for the orchestration cluster to also be the cluster that hosts certain computing resources used by the deployed containerized application, as described in this example. One advantage mentioned above, for instance, is that the computing resources of the orchestration cluster may be immediately prepared to handle latency-sensitive aspects of the containerized application so that restrictive latency parameters may be satisfied. At the same time, it may be a more efficient or effective use of computing resources to orchestrate use of computing resources on other clusters (e.g., cluster 504-2 in this example) for functions that are less latency-sensitive. Accordingly, by deploying the containerized application in a manner that uses computing resources from different dusters, methods and systems described herein may allow for a variety of parameters to be satisfied so as help to optimize performance, efficiency, and other aspects of the deployment.

In other examples (e.g., where there may not be restrictive latency parameters or the like at play) these advantages may not apply to the same extent or at all. Accordingly, it will be understood that, in such examples, the controller 502 may deploy a given containerized application entirely to use computing resources of other clusters (i.e., such that all of the computing resources used for the containerized application belong to clusters other than the orchestration cluster 504-1).

Cluster orchestration system 1204 may access telemetry data 516 from each of the plurality of clusters 504 and may further access cluster attribute data 520 for each of the clusters 504. Either or both of these types of data may be used by cluster orchestration system 1204 to perform the functions that have been described for controller 502 (e.g., determining of the availability of the first and second computing resources, deploying the containerized application so as to use computing resources from the appropriate clusters, etc.). As described above, telemetry data 516 may be indicative of which of the computing resources implemented within each of the plurality of clusters is presently available for use and may be accessed from the various clusters 504 in any suitable way. As has further been described, cluster attribute data 520 may be indicative of computing resources implemented within each of the plurality of clusters and may be stored in a database accessible to the controller 502 or may be otherwise accessed in a suitable way (e.g., directly from each of the clusters 504).

The resource specification 1206 is shown to define the various computing resources 1208 that are to be used by the containerized application when deployed. As has been described, resource specification 1206 may also indicate other parameters (e,g,, latency parameters or other performance parameters, etc.) and/or policies, rules, etc., associated with operation or performance of the containerized application beyond what computing resources 1208 are to be employed. Additionally, as has further been described, resource specification 1206 may be changed for various reasons such that the controller 502 (e.g., duster orchestration system 1204) may redeploy the containerized application to use different computing resources than those used in an initial deployment. The initial and/or changed computing resources indicated within the resource specification 1206 may include any of the types of computing resources described herein. For example, the first and second computing resources 1208-1 and 1208-2 shown in resource specification 1206 may each be selected from a list of computing resources including: processing resources (e.g., CPU resources, CPU resources, etc.), memory resources, persistent storage resources, encrypted storage resources, network communication resources, load balancing resources, and/or other suitable computing resources.

FIG. 12C shows illustrative aspects of how a containerized application may be deployed to use multi-cluster computing resources in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure. More particularly, in a view 1200-C, various example clusters 504-1 through 504-4 (e.g., the same or similar clusters 504 that have been described in other examples above) are shown to each include at least one node 420 (e.g., a node 420-1 included in cluster 504-1, a node 420-2 included in cluster 504-2, a node 420-3 included in cluster 504-3, and a node 420-4 included in cluster 504-4). It will be understood that, as shown in other examples, these clusters 504 may include more than one node 420 (as well as other components such as container orchestration systems, etc.). However, for purposes of the present example, only one node per cluster is shown. Similarly, within each of these nodes 420, a single computing resource is shown (e.g., a “Computing Resource 1” in node 420-1, a “Computing Resource 2” in node 420-2, a “Computing Resource 3” in node 420-3, and a “Computing Resource 4” in node 420-4), though it will be understood that the nodes 420 may include various other computing resources that are not explicitly shown.

View 1200-C further shows a containerized application 1210 that is deployed in a multi-cluster deployment 1212 to use the computing resources from the various different clusters and nodes shown in this examples. Specifically, as illustrated for this example, containerized application 1210 may be deployed to node 420-1 of cluster 504-1 since, for example, this node 420-1 may include certain key computing resources such as processors, memory resources, and a container runtime (e.g., Docker, etc.) to which containerized application 1210 is deployed. However, though containerized application 1210 is deployed in this example to cluster 504-1 and node 420-1, FIG. 12C also shows that molt-cluster deployment 1212 is configured such that other computing resources used by containerized application 1210 (e.g., Computing Resources 2-4) may be supplied by other nodes 420 included in other clusters 504. For example, persistent storage resources, encrypted storage resources, additional processing resources (e.g., GPU resources), network communication resources, load balancing resources, and so forth, may be provided by the other nodes 420-2 through 420-4 belonging to the other clusters 504-2 through 504-4.

In FIGS. 12A-12B, each cluster 504 is shown to be uniform in terms of the computing resources it offers. For example, a uniform number of nodes 420 is shown to be included within each cluster 504 and there is no difference illustrated between the computing resources present within any given node (e.g., nodes 420-1 and 420-2). While this simple conception of the clusters may be useful for purposes of illustration, it will be understood that, in certain implementations, each cluster 504 may be characterized by having different numbers of nodes, different computing resources distributed to the respective nodes, and other such attributes. In certain of these implementations, some or all of the clusters 504 may each be configured for general use and include substantially similar resource proportions for different types of computing resources (e.g., including the first computing resource 1208-1 and the second computing resource 1208-2). In the same or other implementations, some or all of the clusters 504 may each be configured for specialized use and include substantially dissimilar resource proportions for different types of computing resources (e.g., again including the first computing resource and the second computing resource). These two scenarios, with general-use clusters 504 and specialized clusters 504, will now be described and illustrated, respectively, with respect to FIGS. 13A and 13B.

FIG. 13A shows an illustrative distribution 1300-A of computing resources included within a plurality of four clusters 504 (e.g., clusters 504-1 through 504-4 in this example) to which a containerized application may be deployed in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure. In the example of distribution 1300-A, each of the clusters 504 are shown to be configured for general use and to include substantially similar resource proportions for the different types of computing resources that may be needed for executing the containerized application (i.e., CPU Resources, GPU Resources, Memory Resources, Persistent Storage Resources, Encrypted Storage Resources, Network Communication Resources, and Load Balancing Resources, in this example). More specifically, if each of the small squares shown on a row of a particular computing resource under a particular cluster 504 is understood to represent a certain amount of that resource included within that particular duster, FIG. 13A illustrates that similar proportions of boxes of each type of resource are implemented from cluster to cluster.

While some clusters have more nodes and more computing resources than others (e.g., cluster 504-1 is shown to include twice as many nodes and approximately twice as many computing resources of each type than does cluster 504-2), the proportions of the computing resources are shown to be substantially similar. That is, each cluster 504 in this example is shown to have a least some of each type of computing resource and the proportions of the resources are consistent across the different clusters (e.g., there are more boxes showing GPU Resources than Encrypted Storage Resources, for example, in every illustrative cluster).

This type of distribution in which resource amounts scale up and down but proportions remain substantially similar from cluster to cluster may be understood to represent a paradigm wherein each cluster is configured for general use. For example, cloud service providers may determine an optimal proportionality of computing resources that are generally requested by containerized applications (e.g., based on an amount of each type of computing resource that the average containerized application generally requests) and build nodes (e.g., servers, virtual machines, etc.) and clusters of nodes (e.g., data centers, etc.) that maintain approximately these proportions across the nodes and/or clusters so that, subject to current availability of the resources, any given node or cluster may be generally suitable for use in deploying an average containerized application.

In a configuration characterized by this type of general-use distribution of resources, methods and systems described herein for containerized application deployment across clusters may provide various efficiencies and advantages, as have been described. For example, if one cluster 504 is running low on available CPU resources but has plenty of GPU resources while another cluster 504 is the opposite (with a wealth of available CPU resources and a shortage of GPU resources), methods and systems described herein may deploy a containerized application requesting a lot of CPU and GPU resources such that computing resources from both of these clusters are used (rather than the containerized application not being able to be deployed to either cluster since neither cluster, on its own, may have sufficient resources for the containerized application). Efficient resource usage and effective and economical deployment of containerized applications (wherein each application is more likely to have access to plenty of the computing resources it needs) may thus result, particularly as the resources in the plurality of clusters are used heavily and there are relatively few idle resources available at any given time.

In contrast, FIG. 13B shows another illustrative distribution 1300-B of computing resources included within the plurality of four clusters 504. In the example of distribution 1300-B, each of the clusters 504 are shown to be configured for specialized use and to include substantially dissimilar resource proportions for the different types of computing resources that may be needed for executing the containerized application. In this configuration, the small boxes representing the resource amounts of each cluster 504 show that very dissimilar resource proportions are distributed to each cluster, and that different clusters have much higher proportions of some resources than others. As one example, FIG. 13B shows that cluster 504-1 includes lots of CPU resources and memory resources but relatively few network communication resources; cluster 504-2 includes few CPU resources or memory resources but a large amount of network communication resources; cluster 504-3 includes very modest CPU resources, quite a few memory resources, and no network communication resources; and so forth.

This type of resource distribution in which resource amounts may vary from resource to resource within each duster, and/or in which the resource proportions may vary from cluster to cluster, may be understood to represent a novel paradigm of each cluster being configured for specialized use. For example, cloud service providers may determine an overall proportionality of computing resources that may be used by the set of containerized applications deployed to a given cloud compute environment and build nodes and clusters of nodes that reflect this proportionality in aggregate, but that may specialize in subsets of the computing resources rather than all maintaining a generalized proportion of each computing resource. As shown, while the distribution 1300-A shown in FIG. 13A included at least some of each computing resource in each cluster, this need not necessarily be the case with a more specialized resource distribution such as the example of distribution 1300-B. As shown, each cluster 504 in the example of FIG. 13B has an absence of at least some computing resources, though a suitable amount of all the computing resources may be offered by the plurality of clusters 504 when taken in aggregate.

In a configuration characterized by this type of specialized distribution of resources, methods and systems described herein for containerized application deployment to use multi-cluster computing resources may provide various efficiencies and advantages, as have been described. For example, one cluster 504 that specializes in a certain computing resource may enjoy cost efficiencies, power efficiencies, maintenance efficiencies (by information technology personnel specifically trained to manage that type of resource such as a “storage team”, a “processing team”, a “load balancing team”, etc.), and/or other such advantages.

In some examples, a first cluster hosting a first computing resource that is to be used by a deployed containerized application (e.g., the first computing resource 1208-1) may include a substantially higher resource proportion of the first computing resource than is included in a second cluster hosting a second computing resource that is to be used by the deployed containerized application (e,g,, the second computing resource 1208-2). Likewise, the second duster may include a substantially higher resource proportion of the second computing resource than is included in the first cluster, This may allow for efficient and intelligent architecting of the various specialized clusters, including examples in which both the first cluster and the second cluster are implemented within a same data center site. Careful forethought and architecting of a data center could involve creating different clusters 504 within a same data center but that have different resource specialties, different maintenance teams, different procurement and/or management policies, and so forth.

Regardless of whether clusters are distributed in more general-use configurations (such as distribution 1300-A) or in accordance with a more specialization-based architecture (such as distribution 1300-B), cluster attribute data (e.g,, cluster attribute data 520) may be provided to the controller 502 to allow the controller to make timely and accurate determinations of resource availability and to make effective deployment orchestration decisions.

In certain examples set forth above, implementations of the controller 502 have been described that selectively deploy containerized applications to different clusters of a plurality of clusters in a manner in which one containerized application is deployed to one particular cluster (see, e.g., examples described in connection with FIGS. 5A-9 ). Additionally, in other examples above, implementations of the controller 502 have been described that selectively deploy containerized applications such that the applications use multi-cluster computing resources (i.e., computing resources that are from multiple clusters rather than all being from the same cluster). For example, as shown in FIG. 12C, a containerized application may be deployed to execute in a container runtime included within one cluster (e.g., cluster 504-1 in that example) while using multi-cluster computing resources that are provisioned from other clusters (e.g., clusters 504-2 through 504-4 in that example). As will now be described in more detail, certain implementations of the controller 502 (e.g., the same implementations described above or different implementations) may, in addition to or instead of the types of deployments described above, deploy software applications across different dusters of a plurality of dusters with which the controller is associated.

Advantages and features of the present disclosure can be further described by the following statements:

1. A method comprising: receiving, by a controller associated with a plurality of dusters, a request to deploy a software application that includes a first deployable component and a second deployable component; determining, by the controller and based on the request: an availability, within a first duster of the plurality of dusters, of first computing resources capable of executing the first deployable component, and an availability, within a second duster of the plurality of dusters different from the first duster, of second computing resources capable of executing the second deployable component; and deploying, by the controller based on the availabilities of the first and second computing resources, the software application across the plurality of dusters, including by deploying the first deployable component to the first duster and deploying the second deployable component to the second duster.

2. The method of any of the preceding statements, wherein the first and second deployable components of the software application are implemented as serverless functions of the software application.

3. The method of any of the preceding statements, wherein the first and second deployable components of the software application are implemented as different software components from a group including: a frontend component configured to provide control interfacing functionality for the software application; a middleware component configured to perform operational functionality for the software application; and a backend component configured to provide data storage interfacing for the software application.

4. The method of any of the preceding statements, further comprising determining, by the controller, a first compute time parameter associated with the first computing resources within the first cluster and a second compute time parameter associated with the second computing resources within the second cluster; wherein the deploying of the software application is further based on the first and second compute time parameters.

5. The method of any of the preceding statements, further comprising determining, by the controller, a first power usage parameter associated with the first computing resources within the first duster and a second power usage parameter associated with the second computing resources within the second duster; wherein the deploying of the software application is further based on the first and second power usage parameters.

6. The method of any of the preceding statements, further comprising determining, by the controller based on a power usage policy, that the first computing resources within the first cluster are preferred over third computing resources of a third duster of the plurality of dusters for deployment of the first deployable component; wherein the deploying of the first deployable component to the first cluster is further based on the determining that the first computing resources are preferred over the third computing resources for the deployment of the first deployable component.

7. The method of any of the preceding statements, wherein the deploying of the software application is performed such that the first deployable component on the first cluster performs at least one of: providing output data for use as input data by the second deployable component on the second cluster; or using input data that is provided as output data by the second deployable component on the second cluster.

8. The method of any of the preceding statements, wherein: the software application further includes a third deployable component that, when deployed, uses a third computing resource and a fourth computing resource; and the deploying of the software application across the plurality of clusters further includes deploying the third deployable component such that the third deployable component uses a third computing resource on a third cluster of the plurality of clusters and a fourth computing resource on a fourth cluster of the plurality of clusters.

9. The method of any of the preceding statements, wherein: the software application further includes a third deployable component that implements a same function as the first deployable component; and the deploying of the software application across the plurality of clusters further includes deploying the third deployable component to a third duster of the plurality of dusters.

10. The method of any of the preceding statements, wherein: the software application further includes a third deployable component that implements a same function as the first deployable component; and the deploying of the software application across the plurality of clusters further includes deploying the third deployable component to the first cluster.

11. A controller system associated with a plurality of clusters, the controller system comprising: a memory storing instructions; and one or more processors communicatively coupled to the memory and configured to execute the instructions to perform a process comprising: receiving a request to deploy a software application that includes a first deployable component and a second deployable component; determining, based on the request: an availability, within a first cluster of the plurality of clusters, of first computing resources capable of executing the first deployable component, and an availability, within a second cluster of the plurality of clusters different from the first cluster, of second computing resources capable of executing the second deployable component; and deploying, based on the availabilities of the first and second computing resources, the software application across the plurality of clusters, including by deploying the first deployable component to the first cluster and deploying the second deployable component to the second cluster.

12. The controller system of any of the preceding statements, wherein the first and second deployable components of the software application are implemented as serverless functions of the software application.

13. The controller system of any of the preceding statements, wherein the first and second deployable components of the software application are implemented as different software components from a group including: a frontend component configured to provide control interfacing functionality for the software application; a middleware component configured to perform operational functionality for the software application; and a backend component configured to provide data storage interfacing for the software application,

14. The controller system of any of the preceding statements, wherein: the process further comprises determining a first compute time parameter associated with the first computing resources within the first duster and a second compute time parameter associated with the second computing resources within the second duster; and the deploying of the software application is further based on the first and second compute time parameters.

15. The controller system of any of the preceding statements, wherein: the process further comprises determining a first power usage parameter associated with the first computing resources within the first duster and a second power usage parameter associated with the second computing resources within the second duster; and the deploying of the software application is further based on the first and second power usage parameters.

16. The controller system of any of the preceding statements, wherein: the process further comprises determining, based on a power usage policy, that the first computing resources within the first duster are preferred over third computing resources of a third duster of the plurality of dusters for deployment of the first deployable component; and the deploying of the first deployable component to the first cluster is further based on the determining that the first computing resources are preferred over the third computing resources for the deployment of the first deployable component.

17. The controller system of any of the preceding statements, wherein the deploying of the software application is performed such that the first deployable component on the first cluster performs at least one of: providing output data for use as input data by the second deployable component on the second cluster; or using input data that is provided as output data by the second deployable component on the second cluster.

18. The controller system of any of the preceding statements, wherein: the software application further includes a third deployable component that, when deployed, uses a third computing resource and a fourth computing resource; and the deploying of the software application across the plurality of clusters further includes deploying the third deployable component such that the third deployable component uses a third computing resource on a third cluster of the plurality of dusters and a fourth computing resource on a fourth duster of the plurality of dusters.

19. The controller system of any of the preceding statements, wherein: the software application further includes a third deployable component that implements a same function as the first deployable component; and the deploying of the software application across the plurality of dusters further includes deploying the third deployable component to a third duster of the plurality of clusters.

20. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions that, when executed, direct a processor of a controller system associated within a plurality of clusters to perform a process comprising: receiving a request to deploy a software application that includes a first deployable component and a second deployable component; determining, based on the request: an availability, within a first cluster of the plurality of clusters, of first computing resources capable of executing the first deployable component, and an availability, within a second cluster of the plurality of clusters different from the first cluster, of second computing resources capable of executing the second deployable component; and deploying, based on the availabilities of the first and second computing resources, the software application across the plurality of clusters, including by deploying the first deployable component to the first cluster and deploying the second deployable component to the second cluster.

For certain cloud computing applications and use cases, it may be difficult for software developers and providers to anticipate and plan for various logistical details of software usage and deployment. For instance, a given software application may involve various different types of functionality that may be performed relatively independently and may vary widely in demand at different times and under different circumstances.

To illustrate certain such deployment challenges, a video streaming service application example will be considered. Various types of functionality that the video streaming service application could be configured to perform may include, for instance, authenticating users as they sign in to use the service, retrieving a queue of content items associated with a user account (e,g., content that the user has begun viewing and may select to continue viewing, saved content that the user has added to their library, etc.), generating recommendations of video content for a user account based on past activity (e.g., using machine learning or artificial intelligence, etc.), retrieving selected content and providing the content to be presented to the user on demand, making updates to user accounts or preferences, and so forth.

While, in principle, a single containerized application could be configured to perform all these different types of functionality and could be deployed on demand as user requests are received in connection with any of these types of functionalities, various advantages may be gained by breaking up the different types of functionalities the video streaming service application performs. In this way, for example, resources for authenticating users (which may be demanded by a relatively small number of accounts at a given point in time) need not necessarily always be provisioned in connection with demand for streaming video content (which may be demanded by a larger number of accounts at the given point in time). Accordingly, rather than designing a complex application like this video streaming service application as a unified containerized application, it may be advantageous to design the application in a manner that includes independently-deployable components (e.g., serverless functions, etc.) that are each configured to perform relatively narrow tasks and can be dynamically and modularly spun up and down in response to ever-changing, real-time demand for the different functionalities they provide. One deployable component may be configured to handle user authentication, for example, while other deployable components may be configured to perform the other types of functionalities described for this example (e.g., content retrieval, content recommendation, account management, etc.).

As a result of the advantages of this type of approach to software application design, cloud computing providers may offer a variety of “serverless,” event-driven compute services that allow deployable components and functions associated with various types of functionality to be executed independently and on-demand. In this way, clients that develop and provide software applications need not concern themselves with provisioning and/or managing servers and software as a service (SaaS) applications that allow the clients to only pay for the computing they actually use can be integrated to be triggered from various cloud services. A few examples where such on-demand functionality (enabling and powering down supporting infrastructure dependent on real-time usage) may be of value to a software application provider may include, without limitation, mobile and web applications such as the video streaming service application described above, data processing (e.g., batch processing, stream processing, extract-transform-load (ETL)) applications, Internet of things (IoT) services, APIs for existing applications (where it is desirable to not modify the current or existing functionality of the application), and so forth.

“Serverless” computing refers to a cloud computing execution model in which computing resources for deployable components associated with relatively narrow functionality (e.g., independently-executable software components into which an application is divided, serverless functions associated with different tasks required by a software application, etc.) are allocated on demand without clients needing to concern themselves with server provisioning. Accordingly, though computing resources of servers may well be used to perform serverless functions, the functions are referred to as “serverless” to reflect the fact that details of server allocation, configuration, capacity planning, management, maintenance, scaling, and so forth, may be abstracted away from the developers of the serverless functions. In some examples, serverless functions may involve processing that is done in short bursts, with results persisted to storage or passed along to other serverless functions, rather than results being stored in volatile memory. As such, serverless functions may be spun up and spun down (i.e., initiated and terminated) easily and on demand, and when a function is not in use, no computing resources need be allocated to it.

Deployable components described herein may also refer to functions, services, microfunctions, microservices, function as a service (FaaS) offerings, and other such concepts that are related to serverless computing and offered for similar reasons to achieve similar results and benefits. As a few examples, AWS Lambda, Google Cloud Functions, Microsoft Azure Functions, and other such commercial FaaS services may support serverless computing such as described herein, while Kubeless and Fission may serve as examples of open source FaaS platforms that run with Kubernetes.

Certain implementations of the controller 502 may be configured to orchestrate execution of deployable components of a software application, including serverless functions and other such deployable components described above, by deploying these components across not only different computing resources of a node or different nodes of a cluster, but also across different clusters (e.g., including different clusters in a same data center or different clusters distributed to data centers located in different geographies). For example, in addition or as an alternative to allocating resources from other clusters for a multi-cluster deployment of a containerized application such as shown in FIG. 12C, various deployable components of certain software applications may be deployed to different nodes in different clusters (e.g., to operate under different container runtimes, serverless runtimes, etc.), as will now be described and illustrated in more detail.

As has been mentioned, various benefits may arise from software applications that are configured to divide up work modularly with deployable functions in this way, and the flexibility to deploy these functions across resources in a variety of different clusters may create significant benefits and advantages such as have been described above. These benefits include that code execution requests can be handled efficiently at virtually any scale (e.g., from a few requests per day to hundreds of thousands of requests per second); that functions may be deployed without clients needing to provision or manage infrastructure; that functions can be deployed flexibly and efficiently to meet timing and power availabilities and policy-based preferences; that functions may be performed in connection with relevant computing resources (e.g., authentication functions performed by nodes with plenty of encrypted storage, queue retrieval functions performed by computing resources with plenty of persistent database storage, etc,); that clients may pay only for computing resources that they use on a per-millisecond basis (rather than provision infrastructure up front for peak capacity); that code execution time and performance may be optimized with efficient memory sizes; that resource scaling is elastic to be able to handle increases and decreases in demand; that each component or function can be scaled independently in accordance with real-time demand to ensure efficient resource usage (rather than an entire software application being scaled including components of the application that are not currently in as much demand as others); and so forth.

FIG. 14A depicts a flow diagram 1400 illustrating an example method using the controller 502 for software application deployment across clusters in accordance with principles described herein. As shown, the method of flow diagram 1400 may be performed, in full or in part, by the controller 502 illustrated and described above in relation to FIGS. 5A-5B. Similarly, it will be understood that the method may be performed by another suitable controller or orchestration system that is implemented within one cluster and associated with a plurality of additional clusters, While the method shows illustrative operations according to one implementation, other implementations may omit, add to, reorder, and/or modify any of the operations shown in flow diagram 1400. In some examples, multiple operations shown in the method may be performed concurrently (e.g., in parallel) with one another, rather than being performed sequentially as illustrated and/or described, Each of operations 1402-1406 of the method of flow diagram 1400 will now be described.

At operation 1402, the controller 502 may receive a request to deploy a software application that includes a first deployable component and a second deployable component. As used herein, a deployable component of a software application may refer to any component, sub-component, function, serverless function, micro-function, or other such element of the software application that is configured so as to be able to execute separately (e.g., using different computing resources, within a different runtime of a different node and cluster, etc.) from other elements of the software application. As such, a deployable component may be deployed and executed together with other deployable components of the software application (e.g., all being deployed to the same cluster, the same node, to be executed on the same set of computing resources, etc.) or may be deployed and executed apart from the other deployable components of the software application (e.g., to be executed on a different cluster or node with different computing resources), Examples of deployable components (also referred to as independently-deployable components) will be illustrated and described in more detail below.

At operation 1404, the controller 502 may determine the availability of computing resources for executing the first and second deployable components based on the request received at operation 1402. For example, as has been described in other examples above, the request may include resource specifications or other indications of what computing resources are required to accomplish the requested deployment (e.g., to execute the deployable components in this example), and such resource specifications may be analyzed in light of known resource availability for various nodes and clusters (e.g., based on telemetry data obtained for the plurality of clusters in the ways described above) to determine the relevant availabilities. For instance, at operation 1404, the controller 502 may determine both 1) an availability, within a first cluster of the plurality of clusters, of first computing resources capable of executing the first deployable component; and 2) an availability, within a second cluster of the plurality of clusters different from the first cluster, of second computing resources capable of executing the second deployable component. Accordingly, based on operation 1404, the controller 502 may determine that the first deployable component may be suitably deployed to computing resources of the first cluster while the second deployable component may be suitably deployed to computing resources of the second cluster.

At operation 1406, the controller502 may deploy the software application across the plurality of clusters, including the first and second clusters having availabilities determined at operation 1404, For instance, based on the availabilities of the first and second computing resources determined at operation 1404, the controller 502 may deploy the software application across the plurality of clusters, including by deploying the first deployable component to the first cluster and deploying the second deployable component to the second cluster. As will be described and illustrated in more detail below, this deployment may be distinguished from deployments described and illustrated above to use computing resources from different clusters. For example, as shown in FIG. 12C, a single deployment of a containerized application may involve a single deployment to a single container runtime, but resources from other dusters may be employed in place of resources from the cluster to which the containerized application is deployed. In contrast, the deployment of the software application across the plurality of clusters referred to at operation 1406 may involve a plurality of deployments of distinct deployable components to different clusters, each with their own execution runtimes and so forth. Deployment across clusters in this manner will be further described and illustrated in more detail below.

FIG. 14B depicts a flow diagram 1410 illustrating another example method using the controller 502 for software application deployment across clusters in accordance with principles described herein. As with the method of flow diagram 1400, the method of flow diagram 1410 is shown to be performed, in full or in part, by the controller 502. Again, however, it will be understood that the method may be performed by another suitable controller or orchestration system that is implemented within one cluster and associated with a plurality of additional clusters. The operations 1402-1406 of flow diagram 1000 are shown in dashed lines in flow diagram 1410 alongside various additional operations not yet described. However, as with the method of FIG. 14A, the method of FIG. 14B will be understood to include illustrative operations according to one implementation while other implementations may omit, add to, reorder, and/or modify any of the operations shown in flow diagram 1410. In some examples, multiple operations shown in the method may be performed concurrently (e.g., in parallel) with one another, rather than being performed sequentially as illustrated and/or described. Each of operations 1412-1420 of the method of flow diagram 1410 will now be described.

At operation 1412, the controller 502 may determine both 1) a first compute time parameter associated with the first computing resources within the first cluster and 2) a second compute time parameter associated with the second computing resources within the second cluster. As shown, the determination of operation 1412 may be performed subsequent to (and possibly in response to and/or otherwise based on) the receiving of the request at operation 1402. Moreover, as further shown, the determination of operation 1412 may be performed in parallel with the determination of the computing resource availabilities at operation 1404.

The first and second compute time parameters determined at operation 1412 may indicate, for the respective computing resources with which they are associated, any suitable information related to the processing time anticipated for executing a respective deployable component deployed to those resources. For instance, the first compute time parameter may indicate how fast or powerful (e.g., in terms of clock speed, throughput, etc.) available resources identified within the first cluster are to thereby indicate any suitable aspect related to the computation time needed for executing the first deployable component on these resources of the first cluster (e.g., the time it would take to perform one or more tasks associated with the first deployable component, the latency expected for executing the first deployable component, etc.). Accordingly, resources of a cluster that is located in one particular geography (e.g., nearby an end user of the software application) may be associated with a lower latency than a resources of a cluster located in a different geography; resources of a cluster that is more powerful (e.g., including faster processors, etc.) may perform tasks more quickly than resources of a cluster that is less powerful; and so forth.

Such differences may be represented by the compute time parameters determined at operation 1412 and incorporated into the deployment of the deployable components at operation 1406. More particularly, the deploying of the software application at operation 1406 may be based not only on the resource availabilities determined at operation 1404 but may also be further based on the first and second compute time parameters determined at operation 1412 in some implementations.

In like manner, at operation 1414, the controller 502 may determine both 1) a first power usage parameters associated with the first computing resources within the first cluster and 2) a second power usage parameter associated with the second computing resources within the second cluster. As with operation 1412, FIG. 14B shows that the determination of operation 1414 may be performed subsequent to (and possibly in response to and/or otherwise based on) the receiving of the request at operation 1402 and in parallel with the determination of the computing resource availabilities at operation 1404.

The first and second power usage parameters determined at operation 1414 may indicate, for the respective computing resources with which they are associated, any suitable information related to the power usage anticipated for executing a respective deployable component deployed to those resources. For instance, the first power usage parameter may indicate how much energy (e.g., in terms power, heat, cost, etc.) available resources identified within the first duster use to thereby indicate any suitable aspect related to the power usage needed for executing the first deployable component on these resources of the first duster (e.g., the power that would be used to perform one or more tasks associated with the first deployable component, the heat that would be expended to execute the first deployable component at the first cluster, the cost of the power to execute the deployable component at the first cluster, etc.).

Differences in power usage and cost anticipated for deploying different deployable components to computing resources of different clusters may be represented by the power usage parameters determined at operation 1414 and incorporated into the deployment of the deployable components at operation 1406 similarly to the compute time parameters described above. More particularly, the deploying of the software application at operation 1406 may be based not only on the resource availabilities determined at operation 1404 and/or the compute time parameters determined at operation 1412, but may also be further based on the first and second power usage parameters determined at operation 1414.

For certain implementations, operation 1416 illustrates yet another factor that may be accounted for in the deployment performed at operation 1406. At operation 1416, the controller 502 may determine, based on a power usage policy, that certain computing resources are preferred over others (e.g., the first computing resources within the first cluster are preferred over third computing resources of a third cluster of the plurality of clusters, etc,) for deployment of a particular deployable component (e.g., for deployment of the first deployable component in one example). For instance, a third cluster may have computing resources that would be able to execute the first deployable component using less power than computing resources of the first cluster, such that the third cluster would be associated with a power usage parameter that would make it appear to be the more attractive choice for deploying the first deployable component. However, if the third cluster is in a geography in which power is costly or otherwise at a premium (e.g., due to difficulties in cooling such as high ambient temperatures and/or shortages of water, due to high power costs in a particular market, due to other environmental sustainability or cost circumstances, etc.), the power usage policy may indicate that, wherever possible, it is preferred to use the first cluster (and/or to avoid the third cluster) for deployable components such as the first deployable component. Accordingly, the deployment of the software application at operation 1406 may account for the determination at operation 1416 by, for example, deploying the first deployable component to the first cluster (rather than to the third cluster) based on this determination at operation 1416 that the first computing resources are preferred over the third computing resources for the deployment of the first deployable component.

At operation 1418, FIG. 14B shows an aspect that may be accounted for with deployment of a software application that includes not only a first deployable component (which may be deployed to computing resources of a first cluster, as described above) and a second deployable component (which may be deployed to computing resources of a second cluster, as described above), but that further includes a third deployable component that, when deployed, uses a third computing resource and a fourth computing resource. This third deployable component may be implemented, for example, by any of the containerized applications described and illustrated above (e.g., in connection with FIGS. 10A-13B, etc.). The deploying of the software application across the plurality of clusters performed at operation 1406 may further include deploying this third deployable component such that the third deployable component uses computing resources from multiple different clusters (e.g., a third computing resource on a third cluster of the plurality of clusters and a fourth computing resource on a fourth cluster of the plurality of clusters, etc.). In other words, this implementation may function as a combination of: 1) the deployment of a containerized application to use multi-duster computing resources described above (e.g., in relation to FIGS. 10A-13B), and 2) the software application deployment across clusters that is now being described (e.g., in relation to FIGS, 14A-16).

At operation 1420, FIG. 14B shows that, after the deployment across clusters that is performed at operation 1406, the deployments may be reassessed in similar ways and for similar reasons as have been described in other examples. When circumstances change (e.g., as indicated by dynamic telemetry data, by changes in demand for the functionality of a particular deployable component, etc.), the controller 502 may redeploy and/or duplicate one or more deployable components to other computing resources of other clusters as may serve a particular scenario.

FIG. 15 shows illustrative aspects of how different components of a software application may be deployed across clusters in accordance with principles described herein. As shown in FIG. 15 , a software application 1500 may include various software components 1502. For instance, in this example, three components 1502-1 through 1502-3 are shown to be included within software application 1500: a frontend component 1502-1 configured to provide control interfacing functionality for the software application 1500, a middleware component 1502-2 configured to perform operational functionality for the software application 1500, and a backend component 1502-3 configured to provide data storage interfacing for the software application 1500. In various embodiments described herein (e.g., including embodiments described above in relation to FIGS. 14A-14B), deployable components of the software application 1500 (e,g., the first and second deployable components referred to in the examples of FIGS. 14A-14B) may be implemented as different software components 1502 from this group,

FIG. 15 shows that, although software components 1502 are all part of the same overall software application 1500, these components may be deployed across a plurality of clusters 504. Specifically, this example shows a first cluster 504-1 that includes a first node 420-1 having certain available computing resources (e.g., Computing Resources 1 and 2), a second cluster 504-2 that includes a second node 420-2 having other available computing resources (e,g., Computing Resources 1 and 3), and a third duster 504-3 that includes a third node 420-3 having still other available computing resources (e.g., Computing Resources 1 and 4). As indicated, certain computing resources determined to be available within the different dusters may be the same type of resources from duster to cluster (e.g., Computing Resource 1, which is shown to be available in each of the clusters 504-1 through 504-3), while other computing resources determined to be available within the different clusters may be more unique to the particular clusters (e.g., Computing Resources 2-4, which are each shown to be available in only one of the illustrated clusters). For example, Computing Resource 1 may represent processing resources that are used by each of software components 1502 and therefore must be available in the clusters to which the components are deployed, while Computing Resources 2-4 may represent other types of resources that may be used only by certain components and not necessarily by the others (e.g., networking resources for the frontend component 1502-1, storage resources for the backend component 1502-3, etc.).

In FIG. 15 , software application 1500 is shown to be deployed across clusters 504-1 through 504-3 by: 1) deploying frontend component 1502-1 to the first cluster 504-1 (and, more specifically, to the Computing Resources 1 and 2 of the node 420-1); 2) deploying middleware component 1502-2 to the second cluster 504-2 (and. more specifically, to the Computing Resources 1 and 3 of the node 420-2); and 3) deploying backend component 1502-3 to the third cluster 504-3 (and, more specifically, to the Computing Resources 1 and 4 of the node 420-3). This deployment across clusters may be performed in any of the ways described herein (e.g., using a cluster orchestration controller such as described above and local node orchestration controllers such as Kubernetes, etc.). As such, the deployment across clusters may be based on any of the information that has been described herein, including based on compute time and/or power usage parameters such as described above; based on associated policies indicating time/power cluster preferences (e.g., a power usage policy such as described above); based on availabilities of the various computing resources included in the different clusters 504 and nodes 420; based on the resources required for the software application 1500 and its software components 1502 (e.g., as set forth in one or more service requests and/or resource specifications described herein); based on real-time state data for the clusters (e.g., as set forth in telemetry data received by a duster orchestration controller); and/or based on any other factors or parameters as may serve a particular implementation.

Deployable components such as software components 1502 may be independently deployable (thereby allowing for the deployment across clusters shown in FIG. 15 ) in the ways that have been described. That is, these components may be able to operate independently to the extent that, at execution, they may be separated into different software runtimes, nodes, clusters, data centers, and even geographies. At the same time, however, it will be understood that there may be logical dependencies or other relationships between the deployable components operating in different clusters, For example, one deployable component may output data that is used as an input by another deployable component deployed to a different node and cluster. While such dependencies are not explicitly shown in FIG. 15 , it will be understood that, for example, the deployment of the software application 1500 may be performed such that the one of the deployable components 1502 (e.g., frontend component 1502-1 on the first cluster 504-1) either provides output data for use as input data by another deployable component (e.g., middleware component 1502-2 on the second cluster 504-2), uses input data that is provided as output data by another deployable component (e.g., backend component 1502-3 on the third cluster), or both of these. Accordingly, it will be understood that, though the deployable components 1502 are deployed to separate clusters 504, they may share data with one another just as they would if executing together on the same node and/or cluster.

In some embodiments, a controller 502 operating as an orchestration controller in one of the clusters 504 (e.g., cluster 504-1) may be configured to create (e.g., provision) a cluster with required specifications if such a cluster is not found or is not suitable (e.g., because of constraints such as required resources being already committed and/or unavailable). As an example, the controller 502 may receive a request to deploy a software application having multiple deployable components. Based on information associated with the request (e.g., a resource specification of the software application) and attributes of existing dusters 504, the controller 502 may determine that a suitable cluster for at least one of the deployable components is not currently available. Accordingly, the controller 502 may create and add a cluster to the plurality of clusters 504. The new cluster may be created based on the information associated with the request such that the new cluster provides the resources required by the deployable component in question. The controller 502 may then select the new cluster and deploy the deployable component to the new cluster.

FIG. 16 shows illustrative aspects of how different serverless functions of a software application may be deployed across clusters in accordance with principles described herein. As shown in FIG. 16 , a software application 1600 may be similar to software application 1500 described above. Like software application 1500, software application 1600 may include components (components 1602) including, in this example, a frontend component 1602-1 configured to provide control interfacing functionality for the software application 1600, a middleware component 1602-2 configured to perform operational functionality for the software application 1600, and a backend component 1602-3 configured to provide data storage interfacing for the software application 1600. As described in relation to FIG. 15 , it will be understood that deployable components of the software application (such as the first and second deployable components of the examples of FIGS. 14A-14B) may be implemented as different software components from this group of deployable components 1602. However, in contrast to FIG. 15 , the example shown in FIG. 16 also explicitly shows that each deployable component 1602 includes or is made up of a plurality of functions 1604.

Functions 1604 will be understood to represent various serverless functions, micro-functions, or other such elements that may themselves serve as deployable components. Accordingly, just as entire components 1602 may serve as deployable components that are deployed across different clusters in some examples, the subcomponents represented by functions 1604 may additionally or alternatively serve as deployable components deployed across clusters in the same or other examples. For instance, the first and second deployable components of a software application (e.g., the deployable components referred to in FIGS. 14A-14B) may be implemented as serverless functions of the software application in such examples.

To illustrate, FIG. 16 shows that, although software components 1602 are all part of the same overall software application 1600 and although multiple functions 1604 are each included within the same overall software components 1602, these functions 1604 may be independently deployed across a plurality of different dusters 504 (e.g., dusters 504-1 through 504-8). The details of the nodes 420 and the specific computing resources are not shown in the dusters 504-1 through 504-8 illustrated in FIG. 16 as they have been illustrated in other examples (e.g., the example of FIG. 15 ). However, it will be understood that each cluster 504 in this example may likewise include one or more nodes and various available computing resources that are considered and accounted for as part of the deployment across clusters of software application 1600.

FIG. 16 illustrates the enormous flexibility that may be available to a cluster orchestration controller (e.g., an implementation of the controller 502) when tasked with deploying a software application such as software application 1600 that includes a relatively large number of deployable components (e.g., deployable components including software components 1602 and/or individual functions 1604). For example, as shown, a single deployable component (e.g., one of functions 1604) that has to be executed many times (e.g., an authentication function that is executed for each user that logs in to use software application 1600) may be deployed to several different clusters 504 as resources, compute time, power usage, and other such parameters may dictate. More particularly, the software application 1600 may include multiple deployable components (e.g., multiple serverless functions) that implement a same function as one another and the deploying of the software application 1600 across the plurality of clusters may further includes deploying the multiple deployable components to different clusters 504 in the plurality of clusters. An example of this scenario is illustrated by the rightmost function 1604 of the frontend component 1602-1.

As another example of the flexibility made possible by a highly granular software application with many deployable components such as software application 1600, multiple deployable components (e.g., multiple functions 1604 that play the same or different roles and perform the same or different functionality) may each be deployed to a same duster 504 as resources, compute time, power usage, and so forth may dictate. More particularly, the software application 1600 may include multiple deployable components (e.g., multiple serverless functions) that implement a same function as one another and the deploying of the software application 1600 across the plurality of dusters may further include deploying the multiple deployable components to the same duster 504. An example of this scenario is illustrated by all of the functions 1604 within middleware component 1602-2 being deployed to the same cluster 504-4 in this examples.

The deployment scenario in FIG. 16 illustrates a far more complex deployment of a software application across different clusters than is shown in earlier examples such as the example of FIG. 15 . This illustration gives a better representation of the great amount of granularity that a software application relying on serverless functions may have and the benefits of flexible and efficient deployment of such an application that may result. However, it will be understood that even the example of FIG. 16 may be far more simplified than certain implementations that may be carried out for modern software applications, which may include thousands or millions of serverless functions configured to provide service for millions of users across the globe, Being able to schedule and orchestrate these serverless functions to different clusters that may have specialized designs (e.g., as described in relation to FIG. 13B) and/or that are distributed across the globe in a similar way as the users calling these functions may therefore make possible significant advantages and improvements such as have been described.

In the preceding description, various exemplary embodiments have been described with reference to the accompanying drawings. It will, however, be evident that various modifications and changes may be made thereto, and additional embodiments may be implemented, without departing from the scope of the invention as set forth in the claims that follow. For example, certain features of one embodiment described herein may be combined with or substituted for features of another embodiment described herein. The description and drawings are accordingly to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A method comprising: receiving, by a controller associated with a plurality of clusters, a request to deploy a software application that includes a first deployable component and a second deployable component; determining, by the controller and based on the request: an availability, within a first cluster of the plurality of dusters, of first computing resources capable of executing the first deployable component, and an availability, within a second cluster of the plurality of clusters different from the first cluster, of second computing resources capable of executing the second deployable component; and deploying, by the controller based on the availabilities of the first and second computing resources, the software application across the plurality of clusters, including by deploying the first deployable component to the first cluster and deploying the second deployable component to the second cluster.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the first and second deployable components of the software application are implemented as serverless functions of the software application,
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein the first and second deployable components of the software application are implemented as different software components from a group including: a frontend component configured to provide control interfacing functionality for the software application; a middleware component configured to perform operational functionality for the software application; and a backend component configured to provide data storage interfacing for the software application.
 4. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining, by the controller, a first compute time parameter associated with the first computing resources within the first cluster and a second compute time parameter associated with the second computing resources within the second duster; wherein the deploying of the software application is further based on the first and second compute time parameters.
 5. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining, by the controller, a first power usage parameter associated with the first computing resources within the first cluster and a second power usage parameter associated with the second computing resources within the second cluster; wherein the deploying of the software application is further based on the first and second power usage parameters.
 6. The method of claim 5, further comprising determining, by the controller based on a power usage policy, that the first computing resources within the first duster are preferred over third computing resources of a third duster of the plurality of clusters for deployment of the first deployable component; wherein the deploying of the first deployable component to the first cluster is further based on the determining that the first computing resources are preferred over the third computing resources for the deployment of the first deployable component.
 7. The method of claim 1, wherein the deploying of the software application is performed such that the first deployable component on the first duster performs at least one of: providing output data for use as input data by the second deployable component on the second duster; or using input data that is provided as output data by the second deployable component on the second duster.
 8. The method of claim 1, wherein: the software application further includes a third deployable component that, when deployed, uses a third computing resource and a fourth computing resource; and the deploying of the software application across the plurality of clusters further includes deploying the third deployable component such that the third deployable component uses a third computing resource on a third cluster of the plurality of clusters and a fourth computing resource on a fourth cluster of the plurality of clusters.
 9. The method of claim 1, wherein: the software application further includes a third deployable component that implements a same function as the first deployable component; and the deploying of the software application across the plurality of clusters further includes deploying the third deployable component to a third cluster of the plurality of clusters.
 10. The method of claim 1, wherein: the software application further includes a third deployable component that implements a same function as the first deployable component; and the deploying of the software application across the plurality of clusters further includes deploying the third deployable component to the first cluster.
 11. A controller system associated with a plurality of clusters, the cantroller system comprising: a memory storing instructions; and one or more processors communicatively coupled to the memory and configured to execute the instructions to perform a process comprising: receiving a request to deploy a software application that includes a first deployable component and a second deployable component; determining, based on the request: an availability, within a first cluster of the plurality of clusters, of first computing resources capable of executing the first deployable component, and an availability, within a second cluster of the plurality of clusters different from the first cluster, of second computing resources capable of executing the second deployable component; and deploying, based on the availabilities of the first and second computing resources, the software application across the plurality of clusters, including by deploying the first deployable component to the first cluster and deploying the second deployable component to the second cluster.
 12. The controller system of claim 11, wherein the first and second deployable components of the software application are implemented as serverless functions of the software application.
 13. The controller system of claim 11, wherein the first and second deployable components of the software application are implemented as different software components from a group including: a frontend component configured to provide control interfacing functionality for the software application; a middleware component configured to perform operational functionality for the software application; and a backend component configured to provide data storage interfacing for the software application.
 14. The controller system of claim 1, wherein: the process further comprises determining a first compute time parameter associated with the first computing resources within the first cluster and a second compute time parameter associated with the second computing resources within the second cluster; and the deploying of the software application is further based on the first and second compute time parameters.
 15. The controller system of claim 11, wherein: the process further comprises determining a first power usage parameter associated with the first computing resources within the first cluster and a second power usage parameter associated with the second computing resources within the second cluster; and the deploying of the software application is further based on the first and second power usage parameters.
 16. The controller system of claim 15, wherein: the process further comprises determining, based on a power usage policy, that the first computing resources within the first cluster are preferred over third computing resources of a third cluster of the plurality of clusters for deployment of the first deployable component; and the deploying of the first deployable component to the first cluster is further based on the determining that the first computing resources are preferred over the third computing resources for the deployment of the first deployable component.
 17. The controller system of claim 11, wherein the deploying of the software application is performed such that the first deployable component on the first cluster performs at least one of: providing output data for use as input data by the second deployable component on the second cluster; or using input data that is provided as output data by the second deployable component on the second cluster.
 18. The controller system of claim 11, wherein: the software application further includes a third deployable component that, when deployed, uses a third computing resource and a fourth computing resource; and the deploying of the software application across the plurality of dusters further includes deploying the third deployable component such that the third deployable component uses a third computing resource on a third duster of the plurality of dusters and a fourth computing resource on a fourth duster of the plurality of dusters.
 19. The controller system of claim 11, wherein: the software application further includes a third deployable component that implements a same function as the first deployable component; and the deploying of the software application across the plurality of dusters further includes deploying the third deployable component to a third duster of the plurality of clusters.
 20. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions that, when executed, direct a processor of a controller system associated within a plurality of clusters to perform a process comprising: receiving a request to deploy a software application that includes a first deployable component and a second deployable component; determining, based on the request: an availability, within a first cluster of the plurality of clusters, of first computing resources capable of executing the first deployable component, and an availability, within a second cluster of the plurality of clusters different from the first cluster, of second computing resources capable of executing the second deployable component; and deploying, based on the availabilities of the first and second computing resources, the software application across the plurality of clusters, including by deploying the first deployable component to the first cluster and deploying the second deployable component to the second cluster. 